Patricia's Journal—Tuesday, July 9, 1912
Bernhard was right. Oh, how I wish he was not. They came back. I didn't think they could feel anything but hunger. I know better now. The demons can feel anger.
Patricia decided it was time for her afternoon stroll, and Roland was more than happy to comply. It wasn't that he was uncomfortable, but he needed to get up and move around.
When they stepped into the sun, Patricia took hold of his arm to stop him.
"Young man," she said. "Do you think that fancy car of yours can take us to the beach? I would dearly love to see the lake."
Roland was completely taken by surprise.
"That, my good lady, is a capital idea."
Roland guided her to the passenger side of the car and opened the door. Holding his hand for support, Patricia lowered herself into the Bimmer's leather seat.
She didn't say anything on the ride. She just admired the leather interior and marveled at the German finishing. She ran her fingers over the dash and the seams on the upholstery.
Content to enjoy the beautiful day and the peaceful drive, Roland chose not to prod her for details of what he was sure would be a true horror story.
Maybe, Patricia chose to take a drive to the beach because she wanted to postpone telling the story, or she needed the inspiration the lake brought to get her through it.
Whatever the reason, they were not disappointed. With Patricia's instructions, Roland parked the car on a stretch of pristine, deserted beach on the shore of Lake Huron. Lining the shore were miles of algae-coated rocks worn smooth by centuries of erosion. Standing at the water's edge, Roland was stunned by the beauty of this place. He had no idea that the Great Lakes could look so clean.
"Wow," he uttered.
"Roland," she said. "I have visited this place thousands of times, and I feel that way every time."
"I have never seen water as clear as this," he said.
"They don't like water," she said. "The vampires."
"They can't swim?"
"Sink like they were made of iron," she said with a chuckle.
"Can they drown?"
"No, they don't die," she said. "They're dead already. If one of them fell off a boat in the middle of the lake, it would sink to the bottom. Eventually, it would come to shore. I think they just walk on the bottom."
"Jesus," he mumbled.
"Jesus did not visit Kings Shore in the summer of 1912," she said.
She reached for Roland's hand. They walked along the shore, holding hands while she told him what happened after sunset.
"Bernhard tried without success to get those fools to get inside. He stormed out of Auntie's guest room and almost ran out to the town common.
"'They're all dead,' Jack Bronson told Bernhard. 'You killed them in that fire.'
"Jack was a foreman at Daddy's mill for a while, but he got fired when he showed up at work drunk." Patricia laughed out loud. "That fool tried to punch Daddy in the nose when he got fired. Daddy put him on the seat of his pants before he could say, 'Oh shoot.'"
"I wish I could have met your father," Roland said.
She squeezed his hand and continued, "Auntie shouted from the porch for Bernhard to get inside. The sun was so low in the sky. Bernhard made one last plea, but Jack and his group just shooed Bernhard away like he was an annoying bug."
Patricia stopped walking and looked into the water. Roland looked to see what she was watching.
"You see the sunfish?"
Roland didn't see anything but the slimy rocks in the water. He was sure she was stalling. Patricia took more of these moments, as her tale grew more gruesome. She wasn't just telling a story. Patricia was reliving it. Nobody should witness the horror that plagued this community, and this poor old woman was living it a second time.
"Bernhard came into Auntie's just minutes before things went bad. We looked out the window, watching and hoping Bernhard was wrong."
"He wasn't wrong though," Roland said, trying to help her say what she didn't want to say.
Chapter 53
Patricia and Roland continued along the beach at a pace that would normally drive him to frustration. That was the old Roland. This Roland held her hand in his and assisted her progress over the rocky shore.
She made small talk for a while, pointing to birds and a coyote, and voicing concern over how much trash people tossed into the lake.
"When I walked here as a girl, the lake didn't have anything in it that wasn't supposed to be."
Her voice quavered slightly, and Roland's concern for his new friend began to consume his thoughts. He swore he could see the lines on her face deepen while they talked, and hear the strength in her voice falter.
"I didn't have the privilege of knowing Bernhard for very long, but during that short time I never knew him to be wrong." She shifted gears without a hitch. One second she editorialized on the careless way today's youth treated the environment, and the next she was back in 1912.
Patricia stumbled on the uneven ground, and she almost fell to the rocks. If Roland hadn't been holding her hand, she surely would have. He heard a slight moan from her as his grip tightened to keep her up. Once she regained her balance, Roland immediately released her, fearing he may have injured her hand in the process of protecting her.
If she was hurt, she gave him no indication and continued where she left off.
"The scene that unfolded before us that night could only be called surreal. Those men, drunkenly defiant, scoffed at the obvious danger they were in. "Without warning, the bandstand was surrounded by six vampires. They didn't advance on the men there. They just stood around them, watching them as though those men were the most interesting show on earth.
"'Go back where you came from, demons, before we incinerate you as well,' Jack said.
Patricia said, "One of the men tossed a cigarette at the feet of one of the creatures, and they all ran off. Jack and his cohorts thought that very funny. They guffawed loud enough for the whole town to hear. A door opened across the street. Bernhard yelled to stay inside, and the door slammed shut again.
"That was when we heard the sound. At first, we thought sure it was a woman's footsteps. You know that light clicking sound a woman's heels make on a hard surface?"
Roland nodded.
"It was like that, but it was no woman. The thing that made those footsteps was neither woman nor man. Oh, I'm sure it was a man once, but that day had long passed. It was the size of a man. It wore clothes like a man, albeit clothes from an earlier time."
Roland struggled to imagine how old-fashioned clothes had to be for Patricia to make that statement.
"It dressed like something from a Dickens play. A tattered overcoat hung limp on the thing's frame. Saggy grey woolen trousers met boots with big brass buckles on them. The boot leather had no shine left, but those buckles shone so brilliant, they bordered on luminescent. He even wore a top-hat, can you imagine?"
Roland couldn't but only shook his head.
"'What the hell are you?' Jack scoffed.
"Those were Jack's last words," Patricia continued. "That thing snatched Jack by the Adam's apple, and before he knew what was happening, that vampire tore Jack's throat out. He stood gaping at the monster in disbelief for a moment, his hands trying in vain to staunch the deluge from his throat. Jack fell to his knees a moment later. We could hear him making a sickly gargling sound as his lungs filled with his own blood.
"In seconds the creatures that ran away earlier were back, lapping up every drop of spilled blood as it cascaded down the steps of the bandstand.
"The other men with Jack were not laughing anymore. They tried to run, but three more vampires appeared between those men and shelter.
"They played with those men, like cats toying with a mouse they had no desire to eat. Their screams for help echoed through the town for what seemed like an eternity.
"The one that killed Jack walked over and stood directly in front of Auntie's door. It knew. Somehow that d
readful demon knew that it was Bernhard who set that fire. It still wore that ridiculous top-hat so we couldn't see its face. The brim of the hat cast shadows down to the creature's chin."
Patricia sat shaking her head, trying to prevent herself from visualizing that night. She closed her eyes, her face wrinkling like an old balloon as she squeezed her eyes shut with the effort, but the images came. Somehow, tears began to trickle from her pinched lids.
"His hands," she said. "We couldn't see his face, but the hands were clearly exposed to the glow from fires and the moonlight. They were not the hands of a human. Oh, they had the general shape of hands, but they looked like the talons of a raptor. The fingers were too long and god-awful. The knuckles were over-pronounced, the skin was pale, on the verge of being transparent. Black veins crisscrossed the back of those hands.
"Just when I was thinking, if the hands look that awful, I'm glad I can't see the monster's face, it raised one of those hands to the brim of the hat.
"I am not ashamed to say that I swooned when that thing removed the hat. I will never forget how ghastly it was. It had pointed ears like a bat on the sides of a completely bald head. Eyes, Roland. You can't imagine the evil pools that were in the place where his eyes should have been. Deep black pools of evil. It had a long narrow face with a hook of a nose and a slit for a mouth.
"It grinned at us. That was when I fainted. It had a mouth full of jagged teeth. It looked more like the mouth of a shark than a man."
Chapter 54
Patricia's Journal—Wednesday, July 10, 1912
The devil has come to Kings Shore, and I looked into his eyes. He knows it was us. He knows we burned his… His what? I have no way to describe what they are to him. I think for the first time, I may have seen fear in Bernhard's eyes.
God, why do you not help us?
Roland sat alone in his room at the B&B. He sat back in the wing chair, his arms crossed over his chest. He stared at his recorder almost as though he were afraid to push the play button. Long shadows ran the length of the room as the early evening sun dipped ever closer to the horizon.
A knock on the door caused him to jump to his feet.
"Who is it?" Roland said to the closed door.
"Mr. Millhouse?" a small voice replied.
Roland opened the door to find Mrs. Parent, the proprietor of the B&B, standing in the hall. Just barely five feet tall, Mrs. Parent had to crane her neck straight up to look into Roland's eyes. Dressed in nightclothes, it was obvious that Mrs. Parent was ready for bed.
"Mr. Millhouse, can I get you anything before I go to bed?"
"No thank you, Mrs. Parent. I'm fine. You have a good night."
"You do the same, Mr. Millhouse. Instead of clicking away on that computer of yours, might I suggest you go to sleep as well. You're looking a bit run down."
"I'm just a little tired," he assured her. "I just have a little work to finish up, and then I promise I will call it a night."
Mrs. Parent didn't say anything, she just cocked her right eyebrow. It was a gesture Roland knew to mean, I don't believe you.
"Cross my heart, Mrs. Parent. As soon as I finish this up, I will go right to sleep." Roland felt like he was making a justification to his mother to stay up late in order to finish his homework.
She gave him another brief glance, then turned and walked away. Roland closed the door and looked to his recorder. His shoulders slumped, and he made his way back to the armchair. He reached for the machine and pushed Play.
Patricia's voice filled the room as though she were sitting there with him.
"What is that?" I asked Bernhard when I regained myself.
"That, Miss Owens, is the one we must find. It is the source of all the evil that inhabits your little village."
Bernhard's face was a picture of conviction when he uttered those words. It didn't matter how many vampires we burned up. If we didn't find and kill that one, our problems would never be gone.
I looked through the window when my legs felt steady enough to hold me up. I saw only an empty street. Over on the bandstand the corpses of those poor idiot men lay as a grotesque warning to all of us. The leader of the vampires left them that way to tell us that he was in charge.
"I don't think we will see any more trouble from them tonight," Bernhard said. "We should try to get some sleep. We will need to resume the hunt for its resting place as soon as it is light. Until we find it, we are all in grave danger."
Auntie passed around glasses of sherry. I never did acquire a taste for it and waved her off. Bernhard drank his down in a gulp and held his glass out for a refill. Bernhard and Auntie stayed up until the bottle was empty.
Maybe I should have forced myself to drink the sherry. Bernhard and Auntie slept past sunrise. I should know, I didn't sleep a wink. I tossed in that bed for hours, but once I was certain that Auntie and Bernhard were not going to stir, I went back downstairs. I sat in a chair and stared out that same window.
Of course, Bernhard was right. He always was. The demons didn't come back. If you could discount the corpses out there, it was a quiet, beautiful evening in Kings Shore.
I sat in the dark that night. When the sun breached the horizon and began to flood the room with light, I noticed something that brought the whole dreadful night back.
The wall and floor around the front door remained bloodstained. Bernhard had removed Jacob's detached head from the room, but nobody cleaned up the blood. Or maybe that blood couldn't be cleaned with a single cleaning.
When Bernhard found me that morning, I was scrubbing the walls and floor. The water in the pail didn't look like water anymore. It had a pink tinge. Bernhard took the pail away, leaving me on my knees in front of the door. When he came back, he carried a bucket of fresh water.
Bernhard and Auntie were preparing breakfast when I finished scrubbing the blood away. We ate eggs and toast. I don't remember any of us uttering a single word during that meal. Every clink and scrape those knives and forks made against the china plates sounded amplified in the ominous silence of that morning. Not a single sound came in from the open windows either. Deafening is the only way to describe a community as silent.
Chapter 55
Patricia's Journal—Thursday, July 11, 1912
A day of chaos. The countryside looked like hell on earth.
Satan's furnace had erupted in the countryside. Everywhere you looked, plumes of smoke etched a ghastly image against the blue sky. The smell of burning wood and fabrics turned the very act of breathing into an affront.
Roland sat at a table at Tim's reading over the notes he had typed on his computer earlier.
A group of riot-incensed maniacs decided to expedite the vampire hunt of 1912 by setting fire to every abandoned home and barn in the county. They wasted so much time trying to put the fires out, or at best, prevent them from spreading to the forest, that no vampire nests were found.
As the sun sank below the horizon on the far side of Lake Huron, we were exhausted. Not a single monster died, and they would be coming into town to feed. Bernhard had left me behind with Auntie to build teepee fires along Main Street. Just before sunset, they were ignited. It looked almost like daytime out there for a while. Eventually, the fires burned out, and when they did, the demons came.
They were very cautious at first. They stayed clear of the fires even when the fires were not much more than smoldering embers. We got another demonstration why when a gust of wind swirled up some embers. Before we knew what happened, the one closest to the fire in front of the general store burst into flames.
It screamed one of those ear-splitting howls of agony, then calmed down. After the initial writhing, it just stood there, white flames consuming it. Black smoke filled the air. I was grateful to be downwind that night. Breathing that foulness once was once too often.
Just like the previous night, they gathered around the burning thing until it was completely consumed by the flames. Just like the last time they kept at a safe distance. I still have t
rouble imagining those demons having feelings, but they did seem to mourn the passing of their brethren.
Eventually, they left the smoldering ashes and wandered up and down the street. They looked in windows, and sometimes they leaped onto the roofs. I often think how terrifying it was to have one of them climbing around on the roof above me.
Nobody went to bed. I could see lights on up and down the street. A few people were brave enough to pull their curtains aside and look out. Most, I think, were cowering in their basements or in closets. Maybe some hid under beds like frightened children.
Bernhard was a dervish that night, going from room to room, looking through windows, making notes on every vampire he saw.
About an hour before dawn, the monsters turned and walked north on Main, disappearing into the dark. Such a surreal sight, it was almost as though the things had been summoned, and were powerless to resist.
I heard no noise, but you would swear they were called away. Maybe the demon in the top-hat stood in the shadows where he couldn't be seen. I think they could see much better in the dark than we could. So it could have been that.
He remembered Patricia struggling with how to describe the way they communicated. "They did have some kind of, what is it called? When you can make people hear what you are thinking without saying it?
"Clairvoyance?" Roland asked.
"Yes," she said. "Maybe the old one could just think it, and they would leave. Whatever the reason, it was eerie."
Chapter 56
Roland pulled the Bimmer up to the front step of the old mansion. A foreboding grey sky had blotted out the glorious weather that Roland and Patricia had enjoyed to this point in his stay.
Roland looked to the sky and frowned. Not because he dreaded the onset of rain. Patricia's story thus far had dragged him into a funk, and he took the sour turn in weather as a sign that things would only get worse. Things would surely get much worse.
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