The Vampire of Plainfield

by Kristopher Rufty

  A forked tongue ran between her lips.

  “Oh my God,” he whispered. Then he twirled sideways, the heels of his shoes scratching the dirt. He prepared to run.

  Robin snatched his arm, threw him to the ground. He landed on his side, yelling in pain when the shovel jabbed him between his buttocks.

  “And thank you, Timmy, for being so predictable.”

  -39-

  Robin’s hands caressed his chest, rubbing lower. He felt her fingers wiggling and stroking as her hands traveled down to his waist.

  “Stop,” he said, swatting at her hands.

  Robin cackled like a witch from the old spooky radio show he used to listen to when he was little. Her gruff shrills reverberated through the night. Robin threw a bare leg over his waist, and squatted above his midsection. Reaching between her legs, she tugged the front of his pants.

  “What are you…Robin! No!”

  The button of his pants was plucked off. The zipper lowered with a quick rip. Robin moaned as if she were about to taste something delicious. Her hand slid inside his pants. He felt her cold fingers stroking him.

  “No…” he said, though without much emphasis.

  Leaning over his face, the tips of her hair tickled his nose, cheeks, and mouth. Before, when they’d been this close, he’d been able to feel her breaths. Now he felt nothing. She wasn’t breathing.

  Her glowing eyes came close to his. “Join us, Timmy.”

  “Stop.”

  “Please. I meant what I said. At the tavern? I want you, Timmy.”

  “Robin…why? How’d this happen?”

  “When you were digging…Peter bit me. And the master woke me up.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t want anything to happen to you.”

  “Don’t be sorry. I asked him to.”

  “You…what?”

  “When I realized what they really were, I practically begged them to change me. I mean, who wouldn’t want to be a vampire? Living forever, never getting old. I thought to myself: ‘Why should Dorothy have all the fun?’ I wanted to have some fun too. My daddy never lets me have any fun. Now I’ll get to have all the fun I could ever want.” Robin wrinkled her nose, pursing her lips. “And you know what else? When the master changed me, I suddenly knew a lot more than I did before. I just seem to know everything. You can too, Timmy.” Her hand tugged on his erection. “You can be with me. Doesn’t that sound wonderful?”

  Being with Robin did sound wonderful—a dream come true. To do so would be a nightmare of unmeasured proportions. If becoming a vampire was anything like it was in the stories, he would have to die first. Then he would awaken as a creature of the night, cursed to feed on the blood of the living. He could never truly die. His soul would never rest.

  “How about it, Timmy-boy?”

  Robin’s lip curled almost to a snarl. Her eyes looked up. “Peter. I told you stay out of this.”

  “Well, you don’t seem to have the charm on Timmy like you thought you did. I mean, I couldn’t even get him to boink you earlier, could I?”

  “Shut up.” She said, a growl rising in her throat. She pulled her hand out of his pants.

  “Whoaaaa,” said Peter. “Already showing your nasty side, huh?” Laughing, Peter looked down at Timmy. He put his hands on his wide hips. “How about it, Timmy? Want to wake up next to that every night for an eternity?”

  “Dweeb,” said Robin.

  Timmy felt as if he were already dead and trapped in a living hell.

  “But Robin did say something true,” Peter added. “It is a lot of fun. And just think, having a girl like Robin by your side at all times.”

  Robin smiled bashfully. “Oh, Peter.”

  “Come on, Timmy. Join us. Be one of us.”

  Taking rapid breaths, Timmy looked from Peter to Robin. He pressed his lips together, huffing through his nose. Gulped. Said, “Go to hell.”

  And readied himself for what came next.

  Peter sighed.

  So did Robin. “Well,” Robin said, “if you won’t join us. Then you’re going to be the first feeding for our master’s bride!”

  “Robin, don’t!” Timmy shouted.

  She climbed off his stomach, reached down, grabbed a handful of his hair, and pulled. His scalp exploded with pain as he was dragged along the ground. Crying, Timmy reached up and gripped her arms. He gouged at her skin, trying to get her to let go. Her grip was too strong. Looking down the length of his body, he saw his kicking legs. Beyond his feet, Peter slunk along, head down as if pouting.

  When Timmy’s scalp felt as if it were about to tear loose, Robin dropped him. Sharp blasts of heat shot down his face from the top of his head. His skin felt as if it had been overstretched. He patted his head, expecting to feel a drooping scalp. His head was intact, but his hair was falling out in clumps.

  Crouching, Robin grabbed his shoulders and jerked him to a sitting a position. Then she forced him to turn around. She pulled him against her, holding him in a similar fashion as Peter had held her earlier.

  “What is this?” she asked.

  Timmy wasn’t sure what she was talking about until he felt her hand go under his shirt. “No, Robin, don’t…”

  The shovel was jerked free of his pants and lowered in front of him. “You were hiding this?”

  Timmy gulped.

  “What did you plan do with it?” she asked.

  “Nuh-nothing.”

  “Oh, sure.”

  She threw it down. The blade stabbed into the ground at the pruned, withered feet of the corpse. Timmy’s eyes looked past the jagged tip of the handle, following the corpse’s feeble torso upward to its head. The vampire was knelt on one knee beside the corpse. He looked at Robin as she squeezed Timmy tighter. Then his hellfire eyes lowered to the jutting shovel. “I suppose he did not accept the offer.”

  “No,” said Robin. “The idiot.”

  “Then it will be better this way, without the boy choosing wisely. My darling will live again, and she will feast tonight.”

  Understanding that the decrepit thing he pulled from the ground was going to wake up soon and he would be its supper, Timmy squirmed in Robin’s hold. She held him captive with zero effort. “Please, Robin,” he said. “Don’t do this.”

  “Shut your mouth!” She gave him a firm shake. “You had your chance, and you turned it down. Most don’t even get the option once, but

  you’ve gotten it twice tonight. From Peter and me. You denied us. So now you will be a gift to our master’s bride for her reawakening.”

  “No, please…” said Timmy in bubbly voice. Tears filled his eyes, making his vision blurry. “Robin, don’t…”

  “Great. Now he’s crying.”

  “Peter!” Timmy cried. “Please, Peter. Don’t let them do this.”

  “Even if I wanted to help you,” said Peter. “You made your decision.”

  Timmy let the tears flow. His body quaked and jerked as he sobbed. He didn’t care how childish it made him look. He didn’t want to die. He wanted to see his parents again. He wanted to write again. He wanted to do so much again.

  But he wasn’t going to get to.

  I’m going to die tonight.

  “Enough of this pathetic display.” The vampire’s hand lowered to the jutting shaft in the corpse’s chest. “My darling.” His monstrous hand clutched the shaft. “Live again!”

  The shaft made a squelch sound as it was jerked loose.

  A funnel of blue light shot toward the sky with a thundering crash. Timmy was thrown against Robin. She held onto him, and didn’t fall.

  The blue light stabbed the sky for several seconds before it began to swell around the body. No longer shooting up, the light traced the deformed pattern of the corpse. A high-pitched screech like bad brakes assaulted Timmy’s ears. He wanted to use his hands to cover them, but Robin wouldn’t allow it. She gave him another hard shake, and Timmy understood she was telling him to be still.

  The dwarf-like size of the cor
pse began to develop into strong features—shoulders shifted and adjusted with a series of cracks, the neck lengthened, and breasts began to swell. The blue light spread across the body, engulfing the budding torso in a dazzling glow. The top of the head began to thrash and flutter like blue fire. The frantic motions made sounds like a hundred lashing whips. The blue light burst into a spray of sparks, revealing a thick mane of raven-black hair. Dense curls slithered like a nest of snakes from the top of a blue, radiant head.

  The vampire threw back his head, screeching at the sky. Red droplets that Timmy assumed were tears fell from his eyes.

  The sheet of sparkling blue began to shrink, pulling inward to the center of the body. The woman-like shape began to sit up, the light still shrinking. Now she had long, firm arms, pale as snow. Thin purple veins webbed the skin. She held up her hands, flexing fingers tipped with sharp black nails.

  The blue light faded to a pale shimmer that reached from her stomach to the hollow of her neck. The exposed skin had changed from dead and papery to a soft smoothness.

  A pair of heavy breasts with tiny, erect dots for nipples rose through the blue glitter. A small navel appeared on a flat stomach.

  The light seemed to be generating a grotesquely stunning she-creature.

  “She’s beautiful,” Robin said in an astonished voice.

  “Yeah,” Peter agreed.

  Timmy stared at the developing naked flesh—wide hips and a narrow waist with muscular legs and breasts that sat high and full on her chest.

  Then he saw her face.

  The mouth was void of lips, just a gaping, flat oval lined with canine teeth. Her white eyes slashed downward toward two smaller slits for a nose. Spikes, the size of nail tips, ran up the center of her face. At the nose they reached out on either side.

  The vampire clasped its hands together, and held them close to its mouth.

  The she-creature’s body continued to restructure itself, pieces shifting this way and that, as she rose to her feet. The blue light was under her skin now, coalescing in a variety of patterns through her body. She held out her arms, and tilted back her head. A long, alleviated moan swirled loudly from her lipless maw. Her release shook the ground, rustled the limbs and trees. Timmy felt vibrations through his shoes.

  With her arms still held out, the she-creature’s head lowered. She looked at the vampire. Something like a smile pulled at the immovable mouth.

  Reaching up, the vampire’s hands turned so its palms faced up. Fingers extended to take her hand.

  The she-creature’s arm slowly moved toward the vampire’s. “My love,” she said in a whispery rattle.

  Then a stake punched into her chest above her left breast.

  -40-

  Silence filled the area as Timmy watched the she-creature look down at herself. Seeing the stake poking from her chest, she emitted a frenzied cry that quickly broke off to a painful moan. Her skin, which had been luscious and pale and smooth, hardened like clay. Cracks ran up and down, right to left, making crooked patterns all over.

  Her eyes blinked out.

  Then she fell forward, dropping like a statue that had been knocked over.

  The vampire caught her in his arms, and gently lowered her to the ground. “No! This…No!”

  The vampire whipped around, screeching. He caught the stake meant for his head and snapped it easily in half.

  “Seize him!” The vampire pointed the stake’s busted tip past Timmy. He tried to turn to see what the vampire was pointing at, but was violently thrown aside. He pounded the ground, and quickly rolled onto his front. Looking up, his breath caught in his throat.

  What…in God’s name…?

  About twenty feet away, a horrid woman stepped out from behind a tree. She stood with her weight on one leg, a hip jutting. Her naked skin was pallid in the soft glow of the moon, her hair a mussed bushel.

  And very long and…red?

  She started walking forward, moving slightly rigid, as if her legs couldn’t bend right. She clutched a large object in front of her. The closer she got, Timmy began to make out the wide and narrow end. The moonlight showed a tight string on either side.

  A crossbow.

  The woman halted in a small of pool light on the forest floor. She put a gray, sharp object into the crossbow, and jacked it in place.

  “That you, Eddie?” Peter asked.

  “It is,” answered the woman in a muffled voice.

  That’s Eddie?

  Sounded like the old goofball Timmy had known for so long. What was he wearing? When Eddie turned slightly sideways, Timmy saw breasts. Though they looked a bit flat and crumpled, they were big, like four of Robin’s compressed into one. The pinky-sized nipples looked almost black in the night. Timmy scanned the slender frame, stopping on the rump protruding like a smooth hill. Roughly-stitched lines made dark, crooked paths from the thigh, vanishing into the twin gorges.

  It’s a suit!

  Like the one Eddie had been wearing the day he told Timmy about the cannibal tribes he’d been reading about. They used the skin of their fallen tribesmen as body armor.

  The face looked familiar, Timmy realized. A lot like Mary Hogan, though flatter and lacking emotion.

  Before Timmy could give it another thought, Robin and Peter pounced. Eddie quickly ducked Robin’s dive, and spun around as Peter’s teeth gnashed. The sharp fangs hit Eddie’s shoulder and slid off. No harm had been done. Momentarily stunned, Peter raised a hand to his mouth, as if checking that his fangs were still there.

  “Timmy!” Eddie called. “Go for their hearts or cut off their heads!”

  Eddie threw something that had been at his hip. It gleamed as it spun, end over end, through the dark.

  A long blade stabbed into the ground in front of him.

  Seeing this, Peter screeched and charged at Timmy, moving so swiftly that Timmy missed the majority of his travels when he blinked. Timmy made a grab for the protruding knife’s handle.

  His hand gripped…

  Then Peter slammed into him. In a tangle of arms and legs, Timmy and Peter rolled across the ground. Timmy’s back stopped them when it whammed a tree. A cry exploded from Timmy’s mouth. A tingling ache moved down his back and into his legs before the pain crippled him.

  Neither of them moved for several moments. With each inhale, Timmy’s back stung him with hot pain. He wanted to push Peter off him, but moving felt like too much work. His arms wouldn’t act right.

  Why wasn’t Peter doing anything? Was he hurt too?

  As if to show Timmy he was wrong, Peter began to move. Not a lot, just a little twitch here and there for a bit. His arm lifted up and down, as if working the feeling back into it. Then Peter began to squirm his way out of Timmy’s draping arms. Lying on his side, Timmy held up his hands, about to swing the knife Eddie had thrown him. His right was empty. Checking his left, he saw there wasn’t a weapon there, either.

  He groaned.

  He was certain he’d grabbed the knife. He thought he’d just gotten the blade raised before Peter…

  “Tim…Timmy?” Peter said in a choked voice.

  Timmy moved his eyes to look at Peter.

  But he saw the knife first. It stuck out from the center of his chest at angle, the sharp side slanted toward his heart. It looked as if when Peter hit Timmy, the knife had stuck in deep, but not entirely through the heart.

  It just nicked it…

  But Peter was hurting. He lay on his back, arms splayed out, one knee pointed up, and the other leg stretched limply sideways.

  Timmy turned onto his stomach with a wince. Using his elbows, he slowly dragged himself to where Peter lay. He gave another glance at the knife, noting the blood that had spattered its shiny surface looked like oil. From this position, he saw the blade had done more than nick Peter’s heart. It had sliced into it.

  Just not enough to…kill him.

  “I’m…” Peter coughed up a wad of black phlegm. “Sorry, Timmy. I…” He blinked. The evil glow in his eye
s sputtered like a dying bulb.

  “Sorry?” Timmy said.

  Peter attempted a nod, but only got his chin to move. “Yeah…so sorry…for not ripping out your throat sooner.”

  Timmy spotted Peter’s sharp fingernails lurch. His beefy hand clasped Timmy’s throat, shutting off his air. Timmy made quacking coughs as he tried to breathe. Slapping at Peter’s hand, he couldn’t get it to let go. He felt the points of Peter’s nails digging into his skin.

  Timmy dropped his hands away from Peter’s and gripped the handle of the knife. Using all his weight, he threw himself on top of Peter. There was a deep crunch when the knife pushed into Peter’s heart. The tip of the handle jabbed Timmy’s midsection and sent hot, painful blasts through his insides. He slid sideways, landing on Peter’s arm. He stayed there, as if they were cuddling lovers watching the pretty full moon in the sky.

  The hot pain seizing his gut reminded him of how it felt to be kicked in the nuts. He couldn’t move, so he was forced to watch up close as Peter’s skin crackled and faded. The glowing light in his sockets faded to black.

  When Peter looked like a sculpted replica of ash, Timmy began to cry.

  -41-

  Robin Hicks made a grab at Ed. Instead of snatching a chunk of armor, her fist closed on a bulb of garlic. Hissing, Robin snatched back her smoking hand. She held it close to her bare chest, shaking her charred fingers.

  “That hurt!” she cried.

  “Good,” said Ed.

  Robin’s mouth widened. Screaming, she ran at him, but suddenly stopped. Looking past Ed, her eyes widened. “No!”

  Though Ed knew he shouldn’t have, he glanced over his shoulder. Before Robin jumped onto his back, he glimpsed Timmy straddling Peter and ramming Bernice’s knife deep into the fat boy’s chest.

  Ed was smiling behind the tight mask when Robin’s weight pounded his back. He let out a “Nuh” and stumbled forward. He couldn’t feel the touch of Robin’s naked skin on his back, but felt her thrashing weight as if he wore a thick coat while she tried to ride him. Her arms went under his chin and squeezed his throat.