In The Season of The Damned (Book One)

by Shannon Allen

  My hand now was on the door release. I no longer could fight it. I felt myself slipping, falling, and with all of my might in the final second, with my right hand, I managed to blow the truck’s horn. This seemed to snap me out of it, and I turned away from the window. I glanced back, and she was gone. I then heard the frightening sound of something tapping on the truck again. I started the ignition, and I floored it. Behind me, it sounded as if the wind was groaning, and I hoped whatever it was stayed far behind.

  I drove away confused. What had happened? I really don’t know how I could explain this to anyone. I started to call the police, but hung up. What had just occurred? I pinched myself to see if I was dreaming. I kept repeating the words, Ala, was that Ala? I called my ex-wife Susan’s house to see how my son was doing.

  “Fast asleep,” she said. “Would you please come home as soon as you can? Are you okay?” she asked. “You sound sick.”

  I told her I was alright, though I felt far from alright. Was I losing my mind? I called Gabby, but there was no answer. I wanted to convince myself that I was dreaming, and the next day it was a little easier, but I kept seeing what happened and reactivating the dread I felt. I looked up and read a sign overhead. I was close to Illinois now, which would be halfway through my journey. I hadn’t stopped much since the incident, but I needed gas and I was starving. A welcome sight was a sign that read “food and gas, three miles ahead.

  I pulled onto the off-ramp. It was a Pat’s Diner and Diesel the sign read. Just perfect. It was turning grey outside, and after what had happened previously, the lights and people in the diner were all a welcome sight. I didn’t want to be alone. These are the places you only find out of bounds of a big city, the ones full of friendly locals and cold beer, or so I hoped. Peering through the window, it looked like they had a few patrons.

  I noticed a group of people were crowded around a newspaper. I stood at the counter to get a burger and a Coke and maybe a BLT to go, diet be damned. The food smelled comforting, as did the sizzling sounds of onions frying. I looked back at the people crowded around the paper.

  In that moment, a guy ran in, and he hollered to the cook in the back frying, “Pat! You need to take a look at this!” Everyone, hearing the urgency in the guy’s voice, ran to the window. Coming down the street was a fog, a fog like I’d never seen before, and as a trucker, you know fog. This fog was so dense and dark, it looked like something from a movie. It moved down the street, enveloping everything, swallowing buildings and the sky. Some people ran outside and hopped in their cars and drove away, trying to beat the fog.

  The fog was so dense that anything it came upon was not visible. You could hear a slight creaking and slurring sound in it. I had the notion to go too, but the thing is, it was coming from the direction I had to go in. Plus, after the incident the day before, I wasn’t so keen to leave the lights and people of the diner to be alone. “Ah, come on,” the cook Pat said, “I’ll fix you a burger.” The fog had surrounded the diner. “It’ll lift in an hour or so,” he said, not sounding certain. By then it was just six of us: Me, Pat, a waitress, and a couple, plus the guy who’d brought the fog to Pat’s attention.

  “Guess we’re not going anywhere for a while, hon,” the man said to his companion, rubbing her chin and then going back to his meal.

  There was a creaking sound, and the door opened. “Hey, Pat,” a female voice echoed through the diner, “can you believe this fog? This is the only place I could manage to make it to, couldn’t beat it.”

  Pat, speaking like a man who probably used to have a way with the ladies in his younger days, said to her, “You just have a seat, Deidra. I’ll whip you up something real nice, and you can keep us company until this fog lifts.

  I noticed the number on Pat’s arm as he put the burger on the grill, 91, it said. I was going to ask him what it meant, but the woman sat and turned to me. “Hello, I’m Deidra Milan. Helluva fog out there,” she smiled. “And the people in the fog? I’ve never seen people like those before. And the man, he kissed me on the neck!” she said, sounding slightly hysterical. This drew everyone’s attention. “They wanted to come in and say hello, but didn’t feel invited. They spoke of things…”

  Something about the word invited drew my attention to the window. I noticed the fog swirling. “You said he kissed you? Did you know this guy?”

  “No,” she said, looking upset at the prospect. “Do you believe in the devil?” she asked. My mother always told me tales. She said that the devil was the darkest things we could think of, only the devil I saw out there is darker.”

  Then, we all heard it, a swishing sound that seemed to echo. Then there were the whispering voices, and what the voices said scared me: “The sign out here, it says welcome to all. We’re customers,” the voices said. Pat looked about as surprised as a man who was giving birth. The voices continued quietly as if chanting, whispering our names one by one. The lights began to flicker, and shadows darker than the fog raced about outside.

  The couple had eased away from the window. “What the hell is going on?” the man said, grabbing the woman across from him.

  Pat yelled to the guy who’d first told us about the fog, “Go in the back and get my shotgun! There’s ammo in the cabinet.”

  “The phones are dead,” the couple said.

  “I know where you keep it and the shells,” the man said, enthusiastically charging toward the back.

  I grabbed Deidra and we got behind the counter. The fog swirled upwards and you could hear walking on the roof. Pat grabbed the shotgun and the lights dimmed. “I’m going to blow the bitch out of anyone who comes through that door!” he yelled. “Come and get me, you bastards!”

  “No, Pat, no!” I said. “You gave them an invitation!”

  Pat looked baffled. Then there were those words, something spoke in an alarmingly mellow tone, “The priest has nine lives.” The door creaked and slowly opened, and our eyes fell to the floor. I couldn’t move, no one could move as we saw this woman crawling across the floor. She was nude, leaving gooey strings of slime behind her. Her body was contorting like a sidewinder as her yellow eyes slitted and darted about; the pupils looked about four times the size of our eyes. Wherever visible skin was, there was a deep green veiny-ness. It was a horrific sight to behold, unearthly and scary, as she hissed and she reeked of death.

  With every move she made, there was a smushing, sticky sound. Pat knocked down a row of pans as he ducked into the kitchen. The fog seeped in; it was like something heavy was walking in the fog, and we’d catch glimpses of something huge. Pat let off a shot and hid behind a wall in the kitchen; whatever they were, they mostly seemed to want him.

  The crawling woman grabbed the waitress. I motioned to try to help, but something unseen knocked me back. She started biting her in her stomach, pulling out what looked like a baby and an umbilical cord, and eating it as the woman passed away. We heard a scream, a groan, and a crack. It was Pat screaming. We then watched as an invisible force pulled his body through the door and into the darkness with the crawling monstrosity right behind him. The temperature in the diner felt like it had dropped with their entrance, and we shivered in the dimness.

  A rancid smell lingered in the area. If you’ve smelled decaying road kill, it was something similar, although more intense. No one spoke, as if mere words would bring them back. After five minutes of stillness, the fog lifted as quickly as it had come. Pat Leibman was nowhere to be seen, and the phone lines mysteriously were working again.

  Our first call was to the police, and you can guess what that call was like. The locals questioned us for an hour. “Maybe the woman wasn’t slithering,” they said, “maybe she was just crawling on her knees, maybe it was a local gang.” Pat had thrown a few kids out of the diner a few days ago. They agreed we all saw something, but that what we saw, we didn’t see. They could not explain the smell, the rotting odor that still lingered. Something I noticed kind of made me wonder: The cop had a green number 2 tattooed on his han
d, just like Pat the diner owner had. Was it a local thing?

  The cop cut on the diner’s TV, and there was the president talking about a huge spill by the company GARNCO, which is a division of GSCS, the company the guy had mentioned on Ghost Radio. I didn’t pay it much attention at the time. The cops would say things like, “I guess a couple pair of orange eyes looking through the window could be the lights of a car.” They still couldn’t explain the stench. It was as if they did not want the truth. I watched the married couple being BS’ed. “You’re free to go,” the cop said, asking for my number, “in case we have any more questions.” We watched them tape off the crime scene; where the waitress was eaten, there was a bloody pile. “Must be a gang,” the cop said to the other, and I could swear they both smiled.

  I walked out. I once again felt like a victim being preyed upon, only this time it wasn’t by my father. I didn’t tell the cops about the incident that had happened to me nights ago; I didn’t trust them. I felt like someone had drained every emotion out of me as I headed to the truck.

  I put a call in to Mr. Green. “Is Green in?” I asked the secretary.

  “No, he isn’t,” she said, “he’s missing! His wife and family is worried sick. They are starting to suspect foul play.”

  “What?” I said. She explained how he’d gone missing, but nothing else was awry: His car still was parked outside his house, his clothes were on his bed like he was getting ready for work, but no one had heard from him. That was not like Green at all. “Okay, thanks,” I said. “Do you have my number there with you? Please keep me updated on Green.”

  I got into the truck; it was crazy that the truck felt comforting. I just wanted away from the diner now, but I heard a knock on the door. I jumped up so fast I almost hit my head on the top of the truck. It was Deidra Milan. “Hello, can I sit here?” she said, pointing at the truck. I froze, but she lifted herself up before I could say anything. I guess she was okay. If I could understand anything about these things, it was that they had to be let in. “I have no ride away from here. Where are you going?” she asked. “Can you give me a ride to the bus station? It’s a good two miles away. I was here to visit family, but I want to go home now. I called them and told them I won’t be staying.”

  “Is the bus station a straight shot?” I asked. I told her I wanted to be out of this state just as soon as I could. I started up the truck.

  “I live in Indiana,” she offered.

  “Well, that’s just where I’m going next,” I told her. “I can give you a ride.”

  She shook a little as a tear rolled down her cheek. “Thank you that would be great. Just get to the highway; neither one of us has to spend another moment here.” The next hour or so was quiet, we talked on and off about the previous night and asked questions of each other. Deidra remembered nothing about the guy kissing her, but she believed me, because she didn’t remember much of anything about how she got in the diner at all. She’d known Pat for years, and seemed visibly upset when he was mentioned.

  “They were vampires,” I said, “they fit the myth, but expanded on it. Everything we’ve seen on TV, right?”

  “How is it possible?” she said, noticeably sliding over in her seat toward me. You could tell the words had scared her.

  “I don’t know. The only thing I know is what I saw, no matter what they call it, that was not normal behavior.”

  We hit Indiana that same day. It was not long before we were on the main street that led to her house. “I’m going to the library to research vampires; can you point me in the direction?” I said to her.

  “I can do better,” she said, “please let me go with you. I have a bad feeling. I need to know what happened, to see if I can understand it.”

  We went to the library and took out as many books on vampires as we could find. We searched everything from, “Vlad the Impaler,” to Stephen King’s, “Salem’s Lot.” With every tick of the clock, I felt a little more dread for what the night might bring, I fessed up and told Deidra about my first run-in at the rest station. She showed a great sympathy for me and the thought of going through that all alone for these days.

  It was very hard for me not to walk away from this delivery. I think a part of me wanted to figure this all out before getting back home. Here it was, just me, but at home I had a family to worry about and someone I loved. We left the library, finding a $500 ticket for parking the truck where I did. It was the first time I didn’t care about getting a ticket. When you’ve seen what I’ve seen the last few days, your attention is more on questioning your sanity.

  It was already afternoon, and I was tired again. We pulled up to Deidra’s house, a nice, small house, with plenty of neighbors. “Would you like to come in to rest?” she said. “You could pull the truck into the alley in the back.”

  “No,” I said, “I probably better get going.”

  Seeing her open the gate and stand there, I knew what was on her mind: She was terrified. I think I’d better go in. She fixed us a drink. I asked for the strongest thing she had, which ended up being an over proof rum. I wasn’t a big drinker, but after what we’d been through, this buzzed my tongue, seeped down my throat with a pleasant burn, and alleviated the day. Her house was very nice, and the sofa was inviting me to lie down. “We need to talk about protecting ourselves, what items do we have from those books we read?”

  “I have a bible,” she said, “but is that the same as a cross?”

  “I don’t know. They said holy water, crosses.”

  “I have garlic!” she said, racing to the kitchen. “It’s powder, but technically should work, I think. This just sounds insane.” But we both knew what we’d seen. The idea of a bible and garlic were comforting. We sprinkled it around the house at every opening, and we taped crosses made of paper on the windows. We prayed together over a glass of water and stuck a bible page in it. If there had been any indifference toward God, it was gone. We were going to need divine intervention on this one. If we were going to be deluged by vampires, it would not be for trying to keep them out any way we could.

  Tired and needing sleep, I asked if I could rest on her couch, and she nodded yes. She made a few phone calls as I drifted off to sleep while it was still day outside. I began to dream quickly. I heard my seventh grade teacher, Mr. Stians, he was giving a speech on what we take from the world and what we give back, and then there was the usually welcoming darkness and comfort of sleep, and then came the nightmares.

  I dreamed that Deidra had a sunroof. I could see a picturesque sky, but on the roof appeared a female. She had piercing teeth and glowing eyes, and her large, black wings were beautiful and haunting. Her eyes, they were a timid red; it was as if they were harkening to me. It felt like the arms of my grandmother holding me. I could see my grandmother sitting in the clouds, with sadness in her eyes. The woman on the sunroof was someone else I hadn’t seen before.

  My mind clicked that something felt too serene about such a dream, and the thoughts of the day began to flood back to me. I felt a sensation that I’d compare to sitting on the beach when the wave engulfs you and then lets you go. As I woke up from all of this, I could swear I heard the words, “We can’t get in, help us to get in,” and it scared me.

  I sat straight up on the couch and there was Deidra, staring at me. “Deidra, what…” before I could get the words out, she leapt on me, with piles of foam coming out of her mouth, about as thick as the stuff that comes out of a can of shaving cream. She smelled like someone who had been rotting for a few days. For a moment, I lay pinned to the couch with her trying to gnaw down on me. She was too strong, and she bent my head sideways preparing to bite my neck.

  As I faced the table across from the sofa, I saw it, the glass with the holy water in it. I reached for it, and at the last minute grabbed it. I could feel her breath and the beginning points to her teeth were about to enter my neck. The sounds she made were sheer inhuman: growling and gnawing. I flung the cup of holy water on her. It was as if her skin melted o
ff in bubbling chunks, and in a moment I could swear she was Deidra again, and she looked confused. Then, all I could see was fog. A thick fog covered the room like back at the diner.

  I ran outside and got into the truck. I fumbled for my keys, and then I noticed Ala sitting in the passenger’s seat. “How did…”

  “How did I get in here?” she took the words from my mouth. “You invited me. But never mind that,” she said. “You don’t have to worry; I’m not hungry right now. When you first turn, you don’t have control when you’re hungry. It’s something that’s learned. But at the rest stop? That wasn’t me,” she said.

  “What happened to you?” I asked, looking for a way to escape the truck.

  “They were waiting for me when we split ways at the rest stop.”

  “Who are they?” I asked, noticing the stench from Ala.

  “They have been here for ages,” she said, her voice cracking. “I don’t want to be like them; I’m still more like you. They torture me nightly. They show me what they’ve done to people. They are like a pack of hyenas.” I watched as tears fell onto her cheek and then I woke up, still on Deidra’s sofa with the glass of holy water in my hand.

  Deidra was nowhere in sight, and the fog was disappearing from the window. The cops and another missing person didn’t sound good right now, so I went outside and got into the truck. I don’t know where the time had gone. The sun was just coming up over the horizon. Onward to New York. I had to sort all of these thoughts I was having. Perhaps it was too late to turn around. I felt pulled. Where was Deidra? The smoky fog, was that her? Would I see her again tonight? They hadn’t gotten in, but Deidra was bitten. So, she turned into one of them. I was to be her late-night snack. Was the dream about Ala true?