treat sacks, saying “Please” and “Thank you” before running into the road to shove candy bars and lollipops and candy corns in their mouths.
“I like Halloween,” I say, apropos of pretty much nothing, watching him nod as he follows my eyes past the park and out into the tree-lined street. After a little bit, he actually smiles, a first. “I mean, I always liked it before, and I like it even more now.”
He nods, turning back to me. The moonlight falls on his skin, so soft and brown, such a contrast to my coldness, my grayness, the little flecks of green that get darker with every year. Even with the blood slugs squirming beneath his vampire face, it makes me smile to see him smile.
He nods, toward the street. “I’ve been waiting all month long for this. To come out from the shadows, to walk among them, and not be noticed. Just for a little while.”
He looks at me, cautiously, as if I might make fun of him, correct him, or even scold him. When I don’t, he looks back to the streets where children run and laugh and play, unaware that monsters – real monsters – watch them from only a few feet away.
“I’ve been waiting to,” I confess, nudging his cold shoulder with mine. “It’s the only time I can come out from the shadows and walk around, with no one shouting or running or turning me in to the Zombie Awareness League. I thought, I thought I’d have to spend another Halloween alone.”
He looks at me, just as I turn to him. We’re close, but not too close. His smile is crooked, his upper lip full over his hidden fangs, that little flash of yellow sparkling in his eyes. It’s kind of pretty, actually, once you get used to it.
He says, “I thought, after all this time, I might be fooling myself. That people would know, even though I’m dressed up and over the top. But no one pointed me out, no one said a word.”
His eyes meet mine, his so yellow and hot, mine so black and cold. “Until you.”
I cock my head, watching him closely. “No one told you?” I ask. “No one told you we can see through you, see through your skin to what lies below?”
“No one told me anything.” His voice sounds sincere, almost… disappointed… he didn’t get the whole Zombies Versus Vampires 101 lecture.
“But who turned you?” I ask. “They should have stuck around, told you what’s what. That’s how it usually works with you vamps.”
He blinks, rapidly. “I… I don’t know. I woke up in a warehouse, a few miles from here. I don’t, I couldn’t remember the last few days, or how I got there, or why, or with whom. All I knew was that my heart wasn’t beating, and that I was hungry.”
“For blood.”
He nods. “Gallons of it. Bodies’ worth.”
I nod, too, the very words making me hungry, and for more than blood. I turn, and head deeper into the woods, my favorite hunting grounds. There is a clearing, under the October moonlight, far from the streets, and the Normals, and their costumes and their candy and their breathing and their laughing and their living.
Three stumps ring the clearing. Kids come here sometimes, Normals, to sit and smoke and drink and curse and do the things they can’t do at home.
And I’ll never do again.
I come here to do the things I must do. I sit on my favorite stump, at the end, and he considers which one to use. He settles on the one at the other end, leaving a space in the middle. I nod, smirking. That’s probably what I would have done.
I put the trick or treat bag on the stump between us and rifle through it, finding a bag of candy corns all the way at the bottom. I tear them open and toss half of them, one by one, at my feet. I hand him the rest of the bag.
“You know I can’t eat this,” he admits, a little sadly. I know what he means. It’s been so long since I’ve eaten human food, even candy corn is looking good right about now!
“Dump it at your feet,” I tell him, kicking a stray candy corn in the grass. “Like I did.”
He shrugs and follows suit. “Now what?” he asks when the bag is empty.
I shrug back. “Now we wait.”
He sighs but I notice he folds the empty candy corn bag gently and slides it back in the trick or treat bag, rooting around in there and getting all nostalgic, probably, for when he was a kid on Halloween running around in, well, a vampire costume probably.
“Shhh,” I tell him. “You’re making too much noise with the crinkling and the crackling and such like.”
But they come anyway. Two big raccoons, the size of small dogs they are, loping along like fat cats, chittering and chattering as they waddle toward the candy corns, not caring a whit that we’re sitting there, in plain view, bigger than life, just a few feet away. I’m closest to the woods they’ve shuffled out of, so they chitter up to me first.
They snatch the candy corns up, one by one, in their little, leathery, hand-like paws, inching forward to the ones near my feet. When they’re close enough, close enough for me to do it fast and, I hope, painless, I quick step on each of their necks.
Crick.
Crack.
Snip.
Snap.
Done.
Yeah, I know. I know already, but… I’m a zombie, right, so… what’d you expect? I said it was fast! Vampire Costume Kid kind of gasps, but I don’t see him running way, either.
I reach down and grab them by the necks, their flesh still warm and soft, their fat bodies limp in each hand.
“Trick?” I say, holding one out to him. “Or treat?” I ask, holding out the other. He smirks, his smile both kind and gentle.
He nods toward the woods, nostrils flaring, inching off his tree stump as if being pulled by a magnet I can’t see, hear or even smell.
“You have both,” he says, distractedly, inching forward and trampling his perfectly good candy corn in the process. “I might need something a little more… substantial.”
He disappears, quickly, into the woods, his plastic red cape slipping through the bright green brush. “More substantial than raccoon brains?” I ask, gnawing on twin skulls and sucking in the softball sized brains all by my lonesome. It’s probably better that way, actually, seeing how I get after a serving of fresh brains.
They sizzle on my tongue, pure power and energy, making me shiver as I slump, brain-drunk, on the tree stump. I let the power wash over me, run through me, my eyes growing blurry, the world fading away but, seconds later, coming back into focus. I hear shuffling in the woods, struggle to my feet and inch toward the trees.
I smell the coppery scent of blood, hear the twitching of muscles and peer through the tree branches to see Vampire Costume Guy draining a deer, fangs deep in its throat, the beast’s black eyes already growing gray, then white, as the vampire drains it dry.
He looks up at me, growling, as if I’m trying to horn in on his snack. I hold my hands up, surrender style, and slowly back away, back through the trees, back, back... all the way to my stump. I sit there for awhile, using the toe of my fake blood splattered shoe to rearrange the candy corns into crude letters as I try to ignore the slurping sounds coming from beyond the tall trees.
I’m halfway to spelling “Dracula” when he appears from the bushes, wiping his white poofy vampire pirate sleeve across his lips, bringing it away with deer blood, rich and maroon, across one side.
“Feel better?” I ask.
He sits down on his stump, a little muddy, a little foggy, like I was in the first few moments of my own raccoon brain buzz. “I will,” he says, slowly, looking at me, vulnerable, almost shy.
We’re supposed to hate them, the vampires. That’s what every zombie I’ve ever met has said. No one can tell me why, exactly, just to stay away, not trust them, not believe them, not get close to them.
But this one doesn’t seem so bad.
He watches me, watching him, and as the blood works through his system I can see it oozing beneath his skin, dark in his dead veins, reviving them, giving them life, until it doesn’t anymore and he’ll have to feed again.
I look at him, sitting up a little straighter n
ow. “You’re sure you don’t remember who made you like this?”
He looks at me, then past me, eyes lingering on the woods where he took the life of that poor young doe. “I was walking my girl home,” he says, the black of his eyes warring with the yellow of his condition. “We kissed at her door, and I left, taking a shortcut through the woods to my place. I was almost there, too, when these… shapes… appeared.”
He looks at me, focusing in. “Quick, so fast, like a… like a blur. You know, how they do?”
I chuckle. “How YOU do,” I remind him.
He looks confused, for a second, then nods. “Oh, yeah, right. How WE do. I keep forgetting. Anyway, they circled me, and I was flexing, acting all tough, but man… one, two, three, they just bit me. They just… tore into me. It wasn’t in the jugular, either, like in the movies. It was everywhere, all over. The back of my knee, under my arm. I thought, I thought I’d die. I woke up in some warehouse, a few days later, all alone. I don’t know if they left me on purpose, or I woke up early and they were out hunting, or what, but I got out of there as fast as I could.
“I was hungry, too. I mean, all I wanted to do, all I cared about, was
The Vampire in the Vampire Costume: A YA Halloween Story Page 2
