Fangtabulous

by Lucienne Diver

  Bobby grinned at me. “I thought we agreed with Brent and Marcy on no more public displays of affection.”

  “They’re not here.”

  Bobby closed in on me, his grin getting wickeder and wilder by the second. Those amazing blue eyes looked into mine with so much love, so much feeling, that I got happily lost in them, forgetting ghost hunts and other ghastliness.

  He backed me right into the dryer, which was humming along, until it vibrated against my back. Then he pulled himself to me, hands first spanning my waist, then moving down to hold my hips while he swooped in to kiss me. His lips closed on mine, firm and wonderful, and his tongue slipped into my mouth. I let mine duel with his, startling an intake of breath out of him. He was breathing in my air, but I didn’t need it. Anyway, I was too distracted by the press of those jeans I so admired. The motion of the dryer rocked me into him, but it might have had a little help.

  Then something went thump! It was like a sneaker being tumbled dry, suddenly thrown against the side of the machine. It threw me forward, and I almost bit Bobby’s tongue. He drew back, startled, and the dryer gave another double-thump and seemed to shuffle toward us.

  I admit it, I shrieked. Totally girly. It was a machine. But it seemed possessed.

  Ba-da-bump. Bum-bum-bum-BUMP!

  All of the sudden, the machine, which had gone airborne with the violence of its shaking, came down with a crash and opened, spewing clothes at us like someone had hit the eject button.

  It was just at that moment, of course, that a girl walked in, an empty basket in hand, probably to collect the clothes that were all over the floor.

  “Hey, what are you doing?” she yelled.

  “We didn’t—” I started, at the same time Bobby said, “The machine’s possessed.”

  “Possessed?” the girl asked, eyes about bugging out. “Bull crap. I’m calling security.”

  Bobby and I looked at each other, had a whole conversation in a glance, and dashed for the door. Past the stunned late-night launderer, up the stairs, and out the front door.

  The sillies struck me along with the night air, and I burst into uncontrolled laughter. “It’s possessed?” I breathed, the words barely intelligible through my giggles.

  “You have a better explanation?” Bobby asked, indignant.

  “No, but the look on that girl’s face—”

  “Priceless,” Bobby finished for me.

  A few more gasps and I managed to get the laughter more or less under control.

  “Well, that was a bust,” I said.

  “Not entirely. We found out the Old Jail has a demonic dryer. Makes our haunted apartment seem positively tame. What do you think we’ll come across in the graveyard?” Bobby asked.

  “I say we go find out.”

  Bobby offered me his arm, and with one final giggle, I took it and we were off to the Howard Street Cemetery.

  “I take you to all the best places,” Bobby commented.

  I squeezed his arm. “You sure do.”

  We followed a long, tall, wrought-iron fence around and around, looking for a gate, even knowing it would be locked. It seemed better to play with the locks than try to climb the sheer vertical struts. We finally came across the gate and looked around to make totally certain the coast was clear.

  If I were on my own, I would have just misted through the bars. But I couldn’t leave Bobby behind, so I waited and played look-out while he used his mental mojo to pick the locks.

  With a small snick, the lock fell open, and the cemetery gate swung inward a touch. Bobby pushed it farther, and the gate creaked every bit as much as I’d expect it to. I think, actually, I’d have been disappointed if it hadn’t—like getting a fab dress home and discovering it was a whole different color than it had looked in the store.

  I went to step inside, but Bobby dashed a hand to my arm to hold me back. “It’s just occurred to me—what if we can’t enter because of hallowed ground?”

  “Won’t know until we try.” And I really, really wanted to try. Getting nearly strangled made this whole thing awfully personal for me.

  Before Bobby could react, I stuck a toe in. Nothing happened. He relaxed his hold on my arm and I shifted to allow my entire foot to come down inside. I looked up at the sky. No lightning streaked down to strike me dead. No angels appeared before me with flaming swords barring my way.

  “I think we’re good,” I said, surprised.

  “Weird,” Bobby answered.

  We stepped all the way in and Bobby closed the gate behind us, so that the cemetery would still looked locked up to anyone passing. As soon as it shut, the biting wind that had made Brent’s teeth chatter stopped, as if the iron bars were some kind of solid barrier against the elements. It was freaky … and this from a fanged fashionista on the run from the Feds.

  “Stay together or fan out?” Bobby asked quietly.

  “Fan out, I think, but stay close.” I didn’t know why. The breath-stealing ghost—Sheriff Corwin, as rumor had it—couldn’t hurt me, at least not that way. Yet something about this place made all my hair stand on end. By the time we left Salem, I’d look like the Bride of Frankenstein … and that so wasn’t the movie monster I wanted to be associated with. Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, maybe, though with a totally more modern hairstyle and a little more sense of decorum. Always best, I’d found, to leave more up to the imagination.

  “I’ll go right,” Bobby whispered.

  I nodded again, heading left, glancing at inscriptions as I went.

  Sarah Jenkins

  3 years old

  Rest in Peace

  James T. Essex

  Lost at sea

  1823 –1841

  Faith Godsey

  died of consumption

  Age 34 years

  God Rest her Soul

  My eyes started to burn, and I realized there were blood tears forming at the corners, the only kind I was able to cry since being vamped. Hadn’t anyone lived to a ripe old age? Ah, there, I found one.

  Charles Timmons

  called home 1849

  Age 65 years

  But I wasn’t here for the dead—at least, not the ones who’d truly been called home. The cemetery was neatly cared for, the grass trim, if a little extra long right around the gravestones and monuments. No gnarly tree roots or skeletal hands rose up to trip me. All was quiet.

  Yet I couldn’t actually say it was peaceful. The stillness had the feeling of a held breath of someone waiting in the shadows … an intruder, or someone hiding in fear of one.

  “Hello?” I said tentatively into the night.

  No answer. I reassured myself that Bobby was still not all that far to my right and moved forward another few steps, to a new row of graves. Something stopped me.

  Jenny Coggs

  1821-1827

  An Angel called to Heaven

  Six years old. Cripes.

  One of the blood tears got loose of my lashes and started to fall, tickling its way down my cheek. As I raised a hand to brush it away, something tiny and cool, like a puff of fresh air, seemed to brush my fingertips and then to rest on my hand, as if to offer comfort.

  I froze. I’d never believed in all those John Edward, Crossing Over type shows, but if I was right, the dead had now reached out to me … twice. Three times, if that dryer had been trying to get my attention.

  “Hello?” I said again, even quieter, because I was afraid Bobby would hear and call out to see who I was talking to, thus breaking the spell.

  Slowly, I squatted down, so as not to spook the spirit—if that’s what I was really feeling and not just the power of my own imagination.

  The cold touch retreated, but I stayed in position, low and still, as I would with a timid animal I wanted to pet. “I won’t hurt you,” I whispered for good measure.

  I waited. Then I dove deep. I didn’t have Brent’s powers of telemetry; I couldn’t touch grave dirt or headstones and know everything there was to know. I couldn’t read minds or mani
pulate objects like Bobby. What I could do was mist. “Ghost,” in a sense. I didn’t actually have sight in that form, not having physical eyes and all, but it gave me a special awareness of things—places of disturbance in the atmosphere, for lack of a better way to describe it. A sense of densities and patterns.

  I focused on going insubstantial … or maybe unfocused would be more like it …

  Then I felt it. Just ahead of me, there was movement. Something darted around Jenny Coggs’s headstone and seemed to huddle there. The something was small … child-sized and radiating freezy-cold fear.

  I solidified again, because all I had were my words, and no way to use them when I was in mist form.

  “Can you hear me?” I whispered toward the huddling form. “Knock once for yes.”

  I was hoping that since she’d been solid enough for me to feel her touch, she could do this as well. I listened hard, straining my ears to hear, and was rewarded by a small knock.

  “Are you afraid of something? Is it me?”

  A knock, and then, in a second, two more. Oh, right, that had been two questions. Okay then—afraid, but not of me.

  “I wish you could tell me what’s going on. I want to help.”

  The wind stirred a little then, enough to ruffle my hair. I thought it carried with it the words “don’t let him get me,” but I couldn’t be sure.

  Him? Sheriff Corwin’s ghost? Someone else?

  “Gina,” Bobby hissed.

  I felt the cold patch that was, I was now certain, the spirit of a young girl, retreat even farther from me and then wink out. It left an imprint in the night like the images on old TV screens that lingered a second after they were shut off.

  My head snapped around toward Bobby, ready to give him a piece of my mind, even though he couldn’t have any idea what he’d interrupted, when I saw the light. The same light I’d asked Rebecca about earlier—the caretaker, Tommy Haskins, headed our way.

  “We’d better get,” Bobby said.

  I was debating the slower but stealthier crouch and slink toward the exit versus the faster and flashier flat-out run when the voice behind the lantern yelled, “You two. Stop right there.”

  That decided it. For the second time that night, Bobby and I were making a grand exit, racing against discovery. It was a good thing I’d worn my calf-sculpting sneakers. Oh sure, I was supposed to stay eternally young and fit and all that, but a girl couldn’t be too careful.

  As I dodged around a grave that seemed to spring up out of nowhere, Bobby pulled ahead of me. No matter. I knew that with our super-speed, we’d both be out of the way before Old Mr. Haskins could catch us, but his voice seemed surprisingly close when I heard him mutter, “Not in my graveyard. I’ll catch you this time, you fool kids.”

  Bobby had paused at the gate, holding it open for me like a true gentleman and waiting to make sure I got out. I blew him a kiss as I breezed past, and he slammed the gate shut behind me. We dashed together into the night, but I caught Bobby’s hand and pulled him behind a nearby tree to glance back.

  Apparently, I’d watched way too much Scooby-Doo as a kid, because “Old Man Haskins” was surprisingly young. It’d only been my own expectations that had painted the caretaker as doddering. Truly, he was more like twenty or thirty, not much older than whatever kids he was grumbling about. I couldn’t tell what his face looked like, because he sported the same haircut as Johnny Rzeznik from the Goo Goo Dolls—choppy patches of hair falling in front of his eyes. It was a wonder he could even see. His breath puffed out in curling clouds, an indication that his mouth was where you’d expect to find it, but that was about the best I could do as a description besides “tall” and “lean.”

  There were no other lights in the cemetery, and from outside of it I could no longer sense my little girl ghost. I wondered who the he was that I was supposed to protect her from. Tommy Haskins? Sheriff Corwin? The Salem Strangler? (Or were the previous two one and the same?) I was going to have to find out.

  “I’ll be back,” I whispered, a promise she probably couldn’t hear.

  “What’s that?” Bobby asked.

  “Let’s get the others, and I’ll tell you all about it.”

  A quick call around, and everyone agreed to meet up at the brew pub, where Brent and Marcy would soon be going off shift.

  We arrived just half an hour before last call. The pub looked like an old warehouse or fire station that had been converted: square and brick, with newer-looking stained glass windows replacing the boring old ones. Matching stained glass lamps hung above each booth, and flickering red tea lights were set on every table, giving the room a warm, firelike glow. It was cozy, except for the industrial-grade carpet that crunched, rather than gave, beneath our feet.

  We ordered beers we were too young to be served, and incapable of drinking anyway, as an excuse to take up a booth. Way back when I’d first been vamped, me and some others had tried to drink something besides blood and were forcibly introduced to our insides. It wasn’t something I wanted to repeat any time soon. Or ever. Unfortunately, we weren’t seated in Brent or Marcy’s sections, but the blond barmaid who did wait on us (with the kicky blue streak in her hair) had a nearly empty area and seemed to appreciate our influx of business. Eric and Nelson got there about a minute after we did, and Eric tried to make up for the rest of us by ordering a burger and cheese-fries, only to be told the kitchen had closed at midnight.

  Disgruntled, he followed the barmaid as she left with the drink orders and surreptitiously grabbed a bowl of mixed nuts off the bar when she turned her back. He returned to the table, mouth full, hugging the bowl to his chest as if any of us might wrestle him for it. Like even if I’d been alive I’d have gone where a thousand barflies had been before me—no telling who hadn’t washed their hands before diving into the mixed nuts. Besides, all that salt made you bloaty.

  The waitress gave a knowing smile but didn’t say a word when she spotted Eric with the nuts on her way back with the drinks.

  “Just let me know if you need anything else,” she said as she set the last glass down. “My name is Olivia.”

  As soon as she left, Bobby asked, “Now will you tell me what happened back there?”

  Everyone looked at me. “I think we should wait for Brent and Marcy,” I said, not quite ready to tell him I was feeling all maternal about some little ghost girl I couldn’t actually see. Me. Maternal. The two things went together like polka dots and paisley.

  “We’ll fill them in later. Spill.”

  I stared at my hands, which now that I looked were sorely in need of a new coat of polish. Or some remover, if I really wanted to get into my role at Haunts.

  “Gina,” Bobby prompted.

  “Okay, fine. Our apartment isn’t the only thing haunted around here.”

  “Well, we knew that,” Eric started, but Bobby shut him up with a look.

  “There’s a little girl spirit in that graveyard behind the Old Jail who doesn’t want me to let ‘him’ get her.”

  “Him who?” Bobby asked.

  “I don’t know,” I moaned back. “I wish I did. She was so scared.”

  “You saw her?” Eric asked. “Talked to her?”

  “Not exactly. I sensed her and yes, she spoke to me.”

  “Do you know who she was?”

  “I was standing in front of the gravestone of a six-year-old girl, Jenny Coggs. It could have been her.”

  “But you don’t know.”

  “No.”

  “Interesting.”

  If he said so. What mattered most to me was whatever was threatening her. She’d already grabbed me by the heartstrings, and whoever she was, I knew I’d have to find a way to help.

  “What else can you tell us?” Eric asked.

  I gave them everything I had, which wasn’t much, and Bobby picked up the story when I switched to the part about the Old Jail. He skirted around exactly what we’d been doing up against that dryer, but then, I supposed, it wasn’t any of their busine
ss.

  “Now you,” he said to the others when he wound down.

  Eric had already finished his beer during Bobby’s retelling and had just taken his first gulp of the one we’d ordered for Nelson, so his nephew began the tale.

  “While Ulric had everybody at the shop mesmerized with the flaming wallet trick, we slipped into the main part of the store and found the laptop under the counter. It turns out the coffin was bought from JC Theatrical Supplies, labeled ‘authentic Victorian coffin of man buried alive.’ The body was sold separately, I guess.”

  “Any indication of how JC got away with selling the human remains?” Bobby asked.

  “It was listed as ‘skeleton—medical specimen.’”

  “Bull crap.” Strong words, coming from Bobby.

  “Yeah. But the question is, did they know it was crap?” Eric asked.

  “Well, that was our question,” Nelson agreed. “We searched around on the Internet.” Since we’d had to leave all our smart phones, laptops, and anything else traceable through data plans, IP addresses, and GPS signals behind when we went on the run, we were reliant for the moment on public and borrowed access. “JC Supplies does everything from props and costume rentals for theatrical events to procurement of authentic clothing and artifacts for recreations and collectors. A partial list of clients includes the Secret Salem Historical Society, Boston Battle Reenactments, the Puritan Players—”

  “Could this seriously be the Salem Strangler?” Bobby asked, very practically. “I mean, we’re talking about the remains of a guy who died, like, two centuries ago. If the spirit was going to act up, wouldn’t he have done it before now? All he’s done is give Brent a scare.”

  “So you think it’s the ghost of Sheriff Corwin, like everyone says?”

  “I don’t think it matters who it is. We have to stop him.”

  “Let’s break it down,” Eric cut in, like he was the dad of the group, which was about right. He turned his place mat over to use as notepaper. “Anybody got a pen?”

  As we frisked ourselves for writing utensils, Brent and Marcy approached and loomed over us. “We took care of your check,” Brent said. “You all ready to go?”