When he entered the living room, he saw her lying on the floor, her curly blond hair all around her. One EMT breathing into her nose, the other pumping her chest. Mrs. Kellogg was crying, and Andrew fell to his knees.
He had loved Jennifer with all his heart. She had been the one, the only one he’d ever love. And he’d exchanged his love, and her life, to win a football game. He cried and reached for her, and then all of a sudden, the EMT began to shout, “She’s breathing! Look at that! She’s breathing!”
But Andrew’s joy was short-lived. His mother fell beside him, her eyes wide open, her heart silenced by an invisible force that was determined to collect Andrew’s debt.
His sorrow was complete.
***
Darius had never seen the man before, and he wasn’t sure he was seeing him now. He’d lagged behind in the locker room, not wanting to go home and listen to his father rag on him about tonight’s game.
“Darius Prescott, I presume.”
“Yeah, and who are you?”
“That’s not important. What’s important is what I can do for you.”
“Yeah? What’s that, because I don’t do drugs, mister. I don’t want nothing else either.”
The Man in the Black Overcoat smiled beneath his hat. “Except a win, right? How much do you want to win? What are you willing to do to take back that trophy?”
“What are you talking about? How can you do that? Pay off a ref?”
“Oh no, I have my ways. Nothing so lowly as that, I assure you. All I need is your signature. In blood, I’m afraid. Later, you’ll have to make a choice, but for tonight, I’m ready to see you start to win. I have always been a fan of the Yellow Jackets. I want to help you. Sign this, and the victory will be yours. Your next season will be your best.”
Darius felt like he was in a trance, but he understood what the Man in the Black Overcoat was saying. If he signed the paper, with just a prick of his finger, his whole life would change. He couldn’t help but smile at that. Yes, he would sign. And he did.
“Who are you?” Darius asked with a dopey smile. The trance made him feel brave enough to ask questions.
“I am known by many names, but some call me the Spirit of Competition. Until we meet again.”
“Wait! That’s it?” Darius sucked on his finger to make the blood stop.
“That’s it. And when I see you again, I will expect you to make a choice.”
“Okay,” he said with a big grin. He had no idea that in a few minutes, the silliness would disappear and he would forget this night, only to remember it later in dreams.
But he would win. And he would win big.
And he would pay.
Zoe and the Gray People
“Here, Mr. Kittens. You sit here. No. You have to sit up. You can’t fall in your teacup or you’ll drown.” Zoe propped the stuffed animal up in one of her pink chairs. She wasn’t sure Mr. Kittens would actually drown, but that was something Mommy told her when she dozed off at the dining room table. That usually only happened when Mommy had to go to work and woke Zoe up too early.
“Now you sit here, Giraffe. I have your favorite kind of cookie, but you can only have one. If you eat them all, you’ll get fat.” That was also something Mommy told her. Zoe didn’t want to be fat, so she listened. But sometimes she stole a few cookies just so Mommy wouldn’t see her eat them. She nibbled a piece of the stolen cookie and placed the remnants on the Tinkerbell plate in front of Giraffe.
She nearly tripped over her princess dress, but she managed to sit in the chair at the only empty spot at her pink table.
It was late in the afternoon now. Zoe and Mommy were waiting on Daddy to pick her up to take her trick-or-treating. Zoe hoped he would come this time. But she also kind of hoped he didn’t. He never played with her or talked to her when she came to spend the night. He put her to bed way too early and spent the rest of the night playing video games with his friends. Zoe tried to tell him that she knew how to play video games too, but he didn’t listen to her. Eventually, she gave up asking and spent her time coloring in his books. One day when he opened them up, he was going to be really mad. She was okay with that. At least then he’d notice her.
Thump, thump, thump.
Zoe looked behind her but didn’t see anyone in the hallway.
“Mommy?” she called, but nobody answered. She heard Mommy arguing with Daddy over the phone. It sounded like he wasn’t coming again. And Mommy had to work the night shift at the big blue store.
She turned back to her tea party, determined to have a good time. She waved her magic wand over the gathering and hoped that the animals would finally come to life and share a joke or two with her. Zoe liked jokes, especially knock-knock jokes.
Sometimes her babysitter, Nita, told her knock-knock jokes. She liked Nita. Most of the time. She really wanted a little sister to play with, but Mommy said that was never going to happen. She said if it did, she’d kill herself. That made Zoe sad because she really wanted a sister but didn’t want Mommy to die.
Thump, thump, thump.
Zoe smelled something bad. She covered her nose until the stench passed. “Poo-wee, Mr. Kittens. You stink.”
She thought maybe something was banging in her closet, but that couldn’t be right. Toys and clothes didn’t bang on the closet door. What if Nita was right? What if there was such thing as a Closet Monster? Carrying her magic wand with her for protection, Zoe slowly walked to the half-open closet door.
Thump, thump.
A shadow passed over her, and Zoe froze. The sound wasn’t coming from inside the closet but from her window. A gray man was banging on the glass with his head. His banging left greasy marks on the glass, just as if he were made of mushy, moldy marshmallows. Zoe wanted to pee now, but she didn’t dare pee in her princess dress. Mommy would be so mad if she wet in her clothes like a baby. She was five now and not a baby anymore.
“Mommy…” she whispered as she backed away from the window. The Gray Man banged again, and this time he pressed his horrible face against the glass. His eyes were green and snotty like her nose was when she got sick a few weeks ago. She had to go to the doctor for a shot to feel better and make the snot go away. Zoe didn’t think a shot would help the Gray Man. She could smell his stinkiness through the glass. “Mommy,” she yelled now as she ran for the door. She scrambled down the hall, sliding on the frilly hem of her too-long pink princess dress. The fall made her bump her mouth, and she was sure she’d knocked her loose tooth out. “Mommy!” she screamed again.
“Hold on, Shane. Don’t you dare hang up! Shane!” Mommy walked into the hallway with the phone in her hand. Clearly, Daddy had hung up. “Zoe, what are you doing in that? You’re supposed to be getting dressed to go to Daddy’s house. Baby? What did you do to your lip? You’re bleeding! Come to the kitchen and let me look at it.”
“Mommy,” Zoe cried now, “there’s a gray man banging on my window. He’s got snotty eyes, and he stinks real bad.”
“Zoe Michelle. Are you lying to me?”
“No, Mommy.” Her lip quivered, and she sobbed. “He’s horrible.” Mommy handed her a paper towel, and Zoe patted her mouth tentatively, not wanting to see the blood she knew was there. She could taste it. It tasted like pennies.
“Sit here, Zoe. Don’t move!” Mommy took the phone, grabbed something out of the silverware drawer and ran down the hallway. Zoe tossed the paper towel to the side, the sight of the blood making her cry harder. She picked up the kitchen towel off the table and pressed it on the gap in her mouth. She would have to go back and find the tooth if she expected the Tooth Fairy to leave her some change. She stared at the blue and white kitchen towel. Yep, there was blood on it. She held the towel in place and quietly sneaked down the hall, half looking for the tooth and half following Mommy.
She could hear Mommy swearing, and she heard the glass breaking. “Oh God! No!” Mommy shouted.
Zoe stood in the hallway, wondering wh
at to do. She could hear banging on the front door now.
“Mommy?”
Mommy was screaming, and there were other sounds, horrible sounds, growling and more things breaking. They were tearing up her room, and Mommy was in there! She had to help Mommy and Mr. Kittens! Zoe realized she still had her magic wand in her hands. Maybe if she used her magic, she could make the Gray Man disappear. Maybe that would work.
Bang. Bang.
Mommy’s screams suddenly stopped, and Zoe peeked around the corner of the door. Mommy was lying on the floor on her back, and the Gray Man was on top of her doing something to her face. She couldn’t see exactly what, but there was so much blood. That wasn’t Zoe’s blood. She’d fallen in the hallway, not the bedroom. The Gray Man turned around and saw Zoe standing in the hallway. Blood poured down his chin, and she could see Mommy now. Some of her face was missing. Zoe’s magic wand hit the floor.
“Mommy?” she whimpered.
The Gray Man was crawling to her now on his hands and knees. She ran. But where was she going? Suddenly there was banging at the front door and more banging coming from somewhere else. She had to hide. She was good at hiding. She was the hide-and-seek champion at school. She ran back to the kitchen and screamed at the sight of a Gray Lady now standing at the kitchen window. She stared at Zoe like she wanted to chew on her, just like the Gray Man chewed on Mommy. Zoe couldn’t help herself and threw up on the floor. The only place she could go was downstairs into the dark basement. Maybe they wouldn’t find her there. She knew the perfect place to hide.
She jiggled the handle of the basement door. It was always hard to open. She wanted to throw up again, but she had to get away. She had to hide from the Gray People! She heard the Gray Man’s footsteps coming down the hall heavy and slow. Finally, the door sprung open and she stepped inside. She closed it and remembered to lock it behind her. She stood on the wooden steps with her ear close to the door. After a few seconds, she heard the sound again.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Zoe went down the stairs into the darkness. Now she wasn’t afraid of the dark.
It comforted her.
It would hide her.
She hoped.
Zoe heard the thumping get louder. She knew the Gray Man wouldn’t stop smashing the door. He wouldn’t give up until he broke it just like he broke her window. Time to hide and count to a hundred. Zoe wasn’t sure how to count to a hundred, but she would try. She ran to the far side of the basement and opened the dryer door. Then she climbed inside and closed it. She had to close it all the way or the light would come on. Luckily for her, her blanket was inside. She could cuddle up in it and hide.
One, two, three…she counted. Once she got to twenty, she got confused, but she didn’t give up. She counted in her head and not with her mouth. She couldn’t talk, or the Gray Man would find her. She thought about the numbers and not the sounds of growling or the stinkiness that now filled the room.
Keep counting, she told herself, trying not to pee.
She had gotten all the way up to thirty when she was found.
The Vampire Selfie
Cassius pretended to nibble on stale nuts as he surveyed tonight’s offerings. The Red Door Lounge provided nothing appealing, nothing that tempted him, yet the old hunger remained and he loathed himself even more than he loathed his potential victims. He brushed the crumbs from his hands as he stealthily knocked the peanuts onto the floor. Better to appear human than to draw unnecessary attention. Cassius had the strength to take out every stinking patron in the bar, all six of them, but he’d learned long ago that such greedy impulses never served a vampire’s best interests.
The bartender, an exceptionally tall human with stringy blond hair and a pointed beard, kept a disapproving eye on Cassius, probably hoping he would order a fresh drink soon. He would not. Cassius would linger for a few minutes more and then move on to better hunting grounds. He’d hunted here before, back in the eighties. How he missed those days! Such excess, such excitement. You could taste the excitement in the blood, along with the cocaine. But nowadays…
“Someone sitting here?”
“Only the ghosts of yesterday,” he said absently. Sliding onto the barstool beside him in a cloud of cigarette smoke was a young woman, possibly forty, forty-five.
How strange to think that a woman of that age could be considered old. And how old am I now? Four hundred?
Four twenty-five, to be exact. She slapped a grimy-looking purse on the bar between them and smiled at him, showing a missing front tooth. He couldn’t help but grimace. She might be young enough to be his great-granddaughter times ten, or twenty, but he had his standards. He’d long given up feasting solely on virgins; however, he could not stomach the unhealthy. And this woman—the bartender called her Marie—had a disease that would kill her soon.
He couldn’t think why, but he whispered to her as he left the Red Door Lounge, “See a doctor or you’ll be dead in three months.”
She’d cursed him for his kindness, along with issuing a string of profanities as a thank you. Now, the bartender stalked the length of the bar to make sure Cassius left the premises immediately. He sailed past the large mirror hoping no one would notice that as he passed, he reflected no image at all. Nobody did, but Cassius sighed at his own stupidity. How had he walked in here and not taken the mirror into account?
The vampire strolled outside and let the damp stench of the city fill his nostrils. He longed for the Riviera or the fragrant hillsides of Bordeaux! Many of his kind disdained the scents of lavender or any other flower, but he had never lost his love for nature, even after his banishment from the sun. Cassius wanted to be anywhere but here. He hated this city, even though its name escaped him. He hated this century—he hated everything about both.
“Hey there. Are you waiting for a cab? I’m headed uptown. Want to split one?”
Suddenly she was there—his distraction. He preferred to think of his victims this way. Seemed much more civilized than calling them what they really were. A pretty girl with naturally blond hair, perfectly arched eyebrows and skin that smelled like soap. Unlike so many others, she was a fresh face, not a carbon copy of someone he used to know. Oh yes, she would be delectable.
“Yes, please.” Cassius smiled at her, hoping his teeth didn’t gleam too brightly. There was no moon tonight, which played in his favor. In fact, heavy clouds rolled over them, and for some reason, Cassius shivered. He never shivered. Neither cold nor heat affected him, not as they had during his mortal life. He had no time to ponder the strange phenomenon; perhaps he would later when he lay down for his rest. After he fed.
The young woman held her hand up as a taxi slid to a stop in front of them. Fat raindrops began to fall as they scurried into the cab, and she laughed. It was a delightful sound.
“Cotton Street, please,” she instructed the taxi driver. “You?”
“Union. Just around the corner from you. What a small world.” Cassius brushed the rain off the sleeves of his coat and smiled at her again, remembering to keep his smile soft. No shiny teeth. Nothing menacing.
Not yet.
Now, what to say? It seemed silly to ask her if she was from here or what her employment might be. Huh, another bit of oddness. Cassius wasn’t usually stymied by small talk.
“Ma’am?” the cab driver asked her as they began to drive down the narrow street.
“I was talking to my friend,” she said, dismissing the greasy-skinned young man and turning her attention back to Cassius. “Um, I’m Mercedes. What’s your name?”
He accepted her offer of a handshake and couldn’t help but smile again. “Ah, Mercedes. That suits you. I am Cassius. Cassius Bonaparte.”
“Like the painter?”
He couldn’t hide his surprise. Who would know this about him? Only someone who loved the arts. Very old arts. Before he could bombard her with questions, the cab driver interrupted again.
“Ma’am, you can’t do tha
t in here. You’re giving me the creeps.”
“Do what?” Mercedes frowned at him. “We’re just talking. Our hands are above the seat, sir.” She laughed again and raised her gloved hands as if to prove that no hanky-panky was occurring in the taxi’s disgustingly untidy back seat. As if one more sordid encounter would matter. Cassius could smell urine, semen and a host of other odors.
“That’s it.” The driver pulled the taxi to the side of the road, and Cassius immediately understood. The man couldn’t see Cassius in his rearview mirror. And apparently, he was one of the few humans who could not see him even when he looked at him directly. As Cassius got older, this seemed to occur more frequently. No, the driver couldn’t see him at all. “I don’t know what you’re doing back there, but that’s not kosher.”
“Obviously this fellow has a screw loose,” Cassius said with faux disgust as he climbed out of the car. He could have just as easily killed the man—and Mercedes—but he wanted to talk more with her. Hopefully, she would follow him, but if not, he would not force her out of the cab. He knew where she lived now, on or near Cotton Street. Her sweet scent would not be difficult to locate in this foul-smelling city. To his surprise and delight, Mercedes climbed out of the car behind him and stared after the cab incredulously.
“That was weird. At least it quit raining. For now.” She hesitated on the sidewalk, unsure what to do. Cassius did not rescue her as a gentleman should. As he once would have. He did not hail another cab or encourage her to do so. She shuffled in her modest heels and extended her hand to him again. Such a strange gesture. “Well, Cassius Bonaparte, lovely to meet you. I guess I’ll walk home. It’s not really all that far. Good night.”
“Good night,” Cassius said as he watched her walk away. He didn’t follow her; he wouldn’t, not yet. Rather, he took in her scent and walked back to the Red Door Lounge. Tonight, he would forego his usual proclivities in favor of a convenient meal. It didn’t take long for Marie to step outside. She was working, after all, and would be looking for her next client. Clamping his hand firmly over her mouth, he practically flew to the narrow alleyway behind the club and ended her life as quickly as he could. Her diseased blood would not satisfy him, not completely, but it would serve him for now. Cassius wanted nothing more than to think about Mercedes, relive their brief time together, remember every detail of their first encounter.
Halloween Screams Page 3
