In The Season of The Damned (Book One)

by Shannon Allen

  In that moment, my phone rang. “Jeff, this is Laya at ACE. You told me to call you if there was more news of Mr. Green? Are you sitting? He was found outside of the city, in a rest stop, dead.”

  I turned up the volume on the phone. “Dead?”

  “Yes, he’d been stuffed into a urinal.”

  “What was the cause of death?” I asked.

  She hesitated. “Blood loss and broken bones, so much blood. In the local paper interviews, the police said they have never seen a scene like this, that the body was tortured in ways you’d never imagined possible, stripped of flesh.”

  “Do the police have who did this?” I asked, feeling a little squeamish at the thought.

  “No, they don’t, they don’t know, they have come here a few times to ask if Green had enemies. Jeff, who would have killed Green?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “I’m really getting scared,” she said.

  “Have you heard about the spill, Jeff?”

  “Yes, I heard a little,” I said, thinking back to the TV program.

  “It’s the worst spill in US history, really scary stuff! They are quarantining the people in the four states surrounding Yosemite. With that and the Green news, it’s been a crazy few days. When are you going to be back?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, this run has been a little bit harder than I thought.” I thought about how upset she sounded. It mirrored my own feelings, but here we were, living two different circumstances, or were we? Still, the spill was horrifying. I cannot think of that much now. I have to find a store that sells crosses. I remembered the words of the driver in the first dream; the puzzle pieces began to move in place. The first driver was found dead, and Mr. Green was found dead, too. He’d been adamant about me making this journey. How or was Green involved with these things? My thoughts spiraled as I crossed into the next state, at least the trip was getting close to being over.

  I had been driving for hours; I needed a stop. I found a general store. They had bibles and crosses made out of aluminum, this will have to do. I had to make this stop, but I noticed that every stop had meant a new terror, whether it was the darkness of a rest stop or the lights of a diner. I forged on halfway through the state, but I pulled onto the off ramp to find food, a motel, and gas. I paid for a room. The motel room looked comforting. I sat on the bed and flicked on the TV.

  The first thing I noticed was that on just about every channel, there were updates on the chemical spill, and people were protesting the quarantine of Yosemite. It was a true quarantine; they weren’t letting people’s families in to see them. The president was all over the place. People were breaking out in strange rashes. GARNCO was trying to distance themselves, scientists were talking about pandemics, and there were reports of the strange rash even being found in other countries. For a moment, the sheer scope of the situation took my mind off my own problems. “Now, breaking news, a married couple found dead in their home.”

  I glanced back up at the small, hard-to-see photo, and it was the couple from the diner in Illinois. Like something out of my own horror story, the couple was bludgeoned to death and drained of blood. Something inside of me shriveled into coldness. I felt a gripping fear. It was as if these people could get to you anywhere. I got up and looked outside the window. I peered around the motel courtyard. I looked back at the TV as the report continued. The sound to the TV had a bit of static. The report was talking about the events of the last week: “This caps a huge week for strange incidents that seem to be taking place in the Midwest. Two missing children were found dead with their heads cut off and what appeared to be bite marks. Police believe these children might have been abused by people they knew and killed to hide that abuse. Suspects are being questioned.”

  I thought back to my previous experience with domestic destruction, how I had watched my dad strangle my mom to death. I did nothing to help; it was her punishment for what she done to me. See, I always thought my mother was an angel, pure and innocent, till one day I heard her. It had been her instructing my dad to torture me. How many times she’d come in and salved my wounds.

  I watched as he choked her and she gagged; her legs reached out as if they were dancing. He gritted his teeth as if he were going to shatter them against each other. He then looked at me, picked up the phone, and called the police. They arrived, but by then my mother had turned icy blue. As they moved her, I watched her eyelids flutter one last time. He told them everything about how he’d tortured me at her insistence. I never have really cried much since that day. I think all of my tears were used up. I loved my mother; it was hard to see her as a demon.

  I remember having a bad nightmare that did not seem like a nightmare at all. I had awakened to see her sitting on the foot of my bed, her neck still blue. She turned around and looked at me, the handprints from the strangulation visible. She made a gurgling noise, her eyes rolled back into her head and she reached her hand under my covers and clawed me with her nails. I woke up with my legs burning, went to the bathroom, and noticed four very long lines on my leg. I never figured that one out.

  “Now, back to the chemical spill in Yosemite.” At that, I flicked the channel to see if I could find anymore information about the killings that had occurred in the Midwest, but all the news was on the spill. Somehow feeling hungry, using the yellow pages, I phoned for a large sausage pizza. My diet was out the window; I had too many things that were troubling me to care. I told him to keep the change, trying to close the door as quickly as I could.

  The pizza guy noticed the cross in my hand, and I noticed the overwhelming smell of cheap booze attached to him. I’d forgotten to order a coke with my pizza. I noticed the pop machine in the courtyard, but I went to the bathroom and drank water out my hand, because the sun was just going down.

  That night, as I lay in the motel bed, I had another dream. I saw Deidra surrounded by these people, and they were all biting her; she lay in a pool of her own blood. I had a sensation of what it felt like to drown as I watched her. The story of the Black Dahlia flashed in my mind, as she’d died and was drained of blood. Had anyone ever considered vampires? She was disemboweled. The person who killed her seemed to enjoy what he was doing. My mind focused on the sounds around me. I knew I was dreaming. As if the sight of Deidra wasn’t terrible enough, I could hear hissing and wild cat-like noises, then crunching and screaming. I heard the sounds of sirens, a wheelchair squeaking, and birds. Sometimes I would catch glimpses of shadows on the walls around me.

  I woke up sweating, and everything was quiet except for the ticking of the clock. It was that clock, how odd, I thought. You know, the ones that look like a cat with the tail hanging and bulging eyes?

  At sunup, I walked in to turn in my key, but no one was there, so I left it on the counter. I turned to leave, but before I could, I heard a drip-drop, drip-drop coming from a room in the back. My mind told me to get in the truck and just leave, but I felt curiosity snatch away my common sense, or whatever was left of it. I saw a curtained-off room, walked to the curtain, and peered behind it. As the curtain swung back, I could feel flies hitting me in my face.

  There they were, the bodies of the guy who had given me the key and a few other people. The state of the bodies was something that only could be drawn up in the mind of a coroner. The flies fluttered, unable to escape the red moisture spread about; it had trapped them. One body was ripped completely in half, leaving the sickening sight of fatty tissues exploding out. I stood there, stunned. I gripped the aluminum cross I’d tied around my neck the night before. There in the corner was the pizza delivery guy. His head looked like it had been smashed in, and his one unaffected eye was left staring into oblivion. Blood was everywhere, everything was soaked in it, and there was a mashing of blood and flies. His hair was slicked in it, and soaked in the blood were delivery flyers that read, “30 minutes or free.”

  I felt vomit arise in my throat. I had to get fresh air, so I fell against every wall as I made it out into the s
un. They had been there, waiting for me, but instead decided to snatch the delivery guy? Had they been there the whole time? Had I barely made it to my room? I wasn’t calling the police. First the disappearance at the diner, and now this? Maybe it’s better if I just left, and that’s what I did.

  Before the motel left my view I could hear the sound of a police siren. Surely someone had alerted them. The phone rang. “It’s Gabby! There’s something I thought you should know…GARNCO…” Click. Just as she said GARNCO, the phone lost its signal. What was she about to say? I tried vigorously to get her back for the next thirty minutes. GARNCO were the people behind the large spill. I cut on the truck radio. It sounded like the effects of the spill were getting worse.

  First my family flashed into my mind, and then Gabby, and then my thoughts went back to the motel: What if some unhinged madman had killed those people? What if I was letting him get away? They’d throw me in jail if they heard my story. These vampires seem to be following me, like they were playing some crooked game. I was their cruel joke. Who’d invited them into the motel? Was the big sign that said, “WELCOME ALL,” enough? Was it all they needed to give them entry?

  I’m sitting here thinking about vampires; it was absurd, and yet, I couldn’t deny any of it. I remembered a conversation with a friend, Barney Hasbreck. He was a strange fellow who lived down the street from my aunt’s home; that’s where I went to stay after the incident with my parents. I remember once, while we were sitting at the spinning wheel on the playground across the street, he’d told me about vampires, and how they, whoever that was, had covered things up, but a few morsels had slipped out from in between the cracks. They’d find victims sometimes with puncture wounds and loss of blood, but this just sounded a bit like an urban legend to me at the time. He told me about a true story where a guy robbed a blood bank and jumped out a window, and they never found his body, even though they were many stories up.

  I would call Barney, but he died at nineteen, the victim of a hit-and-run. Some say it was a local cop the neighborhood called Dirty Red. This guy was untouchable; everyone feared him. People say that they saw him hit Barney, and it went as far as court, but the guy had connections. Barney’s family felt he paid off the judge in the case.. He didn’t even get community service.

  I pulled into a stop to fill up with gas; there were many trucks, so I knew there would be a wait. I opened one of the library books on vampires and read a few pages. This entry was entitled, “The First Vampire,” and it read:

  We arrived in Ecuador with the fury of the wind, the feeling of finally being here was immense among the colleagues. We were going to do what others had failed: We were going to bring religion to the Hourani people. The people were said to be savages, and they lived here in the Ecuadorian rain forest. Previous tries had left the missionaries either dead or scared to go back, but it would be different this time. We have been invited by a Marie Galen, a fierce woman, who had made some headway into gaining the tribe’s trust.

  We settled into our tents that night. I heard the wind rustle through the trees, its sounds unnerving and cold. There was darkness outside the tent so thick it was crushing. I seemed to hear distant echoes and crying; perhaps my mind was playing tricks on me.

  In the pale of morning we awoke, and we were shocked to find that half of our group had gone missing. Also, one of our boats was gone. We quickly gathered that they simply didn’t have the courage to stay.

  The day turned to midday, and Marie had sent a messenger, we were to use them to guide us to the part of land where she was residing. The messenger was a Haurani; he spoke badly broken English, and yet it was amazing that Marie had been able to teach him any English at all. It took us awhile to reach Marie, a day’s journey. Hungry and thirsty, we were ushered into all hut. There, sat Marie.

  “I am sorry,” she said, “sorry that you came here. Not exactly the welcome you expect to get from a friend. I have doomed you all. Everyone says they don’t want to let the outside in. They have been trying to keep what is inside out. My help will get you food and warm blankets. I’ll explain more in the morning,” she said. “Until then, I have a few demands: Do not invite anyone in if you should hear knocking, and keep these around your necks,” she said, handing us wooden crosses. Then, she handed us each a clove of garlic to eat.

  The book was too real for me. I closed it, wondering how it all would end. On a lonely highway, you sometimes can search yourself to see who you are. My mother used to say that you can spend a lifetime searching for yourself, or you can know who you are in a fraction of a second; it just takes the right motivation. Everything suddenly added up; it clicked in the dead of night. The last few days flashed back to me.

  I pulled over, grabbed the cargo area key, and walked to the back of the truck. I’d never really paid much attention to the cargo, what was I carrying, or rather, whom I was carrying. The sounds, the maggots, the coldness…I undid the lock, and upon opening the truck, the smell leaped out at me, almost tackling me to the ground. I flashed my light towards the cargo. Some of them were open, and I stepped up. It was as I suspected. A wave of fear took me under.

  There were wooden boxes full of earth, slimy shards of skin and bone tossed about, and worms wiggling in the discord. The walls of the cargo box were full of bloody handprints. Then there were the identifications, wallets, and other personal belongings of their victims. I stared down to see a baby doll half bathed in blood and soil. It was one of the saddest things I ever have seen. All this time, they had used me. I was their limo service, taxiing them across the country. I had taken them to every stop; I’d played my part perfectly as they used the world as their buffet. Had Mr. Green known?

  I examined the cargo lock and noticed that upon further inspection it was broken. I felt the hair stand up on the back of my neck. Afraid to turn around, I did just that. A quarter-mile down the road I could see the fog seeping toward me. I could hear the sounds of goats in the fog, like the one we had when I was a kid. It seemed like the fog wanted me to stop, but I refused to look at it again. I knew I’d be like a deer caught in its headlights. One thing did catch my eyes briefly, the fullness of the moon. I opened the gas input, ran to the front, and grabbed a napkin. I stuck it in the fill reservoir and lit it. I began to run up the highway; they were not using me anymore. Had I escaped up until now just to fulfill their journey? There was a loud explosion, and I looked back to see the truck engulfed in flames.

  I jogged until I found a motel. I checked in, and I knew: I knew that this had come to a head, that they would be angry. I prepared myself as best I could. Knowing they were coming, I put the cross around my neck once again. I found myself praying over water. I cut on the TV, full panic over the spill now, as there was looting and more places being quarantined. People were attacking each other. A state of emergency was declared around Yosemite. I could get no one on the phones.

  After several hours, Susan’s answering machine picked up. She said they were heading to a place in Texas, the place was a wooded cabin. They were going where there was food and plenty of guns. Her last words were, “Jeff, if you get this message…” and it clicked off. Just at that moment, I heard what sounded like whispers and a tapping at the door. The light rapping that they were doing totally freaked me out again.

  “Jeff?” a voice said to my astonishment. “Can I come in?” It was Gabby. I went to the door, judgment weighing on me.

  “Gabby?” I said, “Is that really you?”

  “Yes it is,” she said, the yes trailing off into a hiss. I felt the tears stream down my face. The feeling of sweet temptation again…Was it Gabby? I put my hand on the doorknob, undid the lock, and opened it. There, in front of me, lanky and more beautiful than ever, was Gabby. Her eyes were glowing a somber blue. Her mouth was outlined in blood. “I missed you,” she said. “There is something happening out here. Can I come in?”

  “No,” I said fighting myself and everything inside of me. “What is happening?” I asked.

  �
��Your world is changing,” she said.

  “If you are Gabby, then tell me what you wanted to tell me the other day before I left.”

  “You already know,” she said.

  “No,” I said, “this can’t be.”

  “But you know it is,” she said. “You’ve never met my parents, we’ve only seen each other at night, watching horror movies, vampire films? I wanted to change myself for you, Jeff, but the truth is, I’m not even…I’m not human anymore.”

  “Why me?” I asked.

  “You reminded me of someone I knew a long time ago. And then it was just about you. I watched you every night. At first, I felt like a cat playing with its food, but sometimes the cat and mouse become friends. I thought about what it would be like to eat you every time we were together. I savored the moment when I would rip into your throbbing jugular and taste the salty and the sweetness in your blood. Because that’s what we do. Then it went away, and something else appeared in its place.” As she spoke, her eyes lost their glow, looking normal again.

  “They’ve sent me here to do it, but I can’t. They needed to travel, and you helped them get where they needed to go. They have decided to give you a choice. A choice they gave Green, but he tried to renege. They want you to join them. You’ll drive them when they need to move.”

  “Gabby, you see what you do? Ala? Deidra?”

  “Jeff, it’s what we are. Think of how satisfying it is to eat.”

  “Why didn’t you just kill me, Gabby?” I watched her eyes, they would slightly glow and then look almost human. “How did you fool me?”

  “Slight hypnosis, just enough so you wouldn’t notice things, like the coldness. Once you invited me, it was easy.”

  “You could have killed me if you wanted to, Gabby. You didn’t because you love me as much as I love you.”