“Well you ain’t the one that got kicked,” Spangler responded.
“Oh, walk it off ya damn bay-bee.”
“Are we gonna move her?” Misty said, blinking as if she’d just woken up, “’Cause they’re waiting on us.”
“Grab an arm,” Walter said. He and Rusty both took one of her hands and dragged her across the ground, toward another opening in the cave.
“Marcus won’t be happy if she comes back all bruised up,” Misty said matter-of-factly.
“I don’t care,” Walter said, “Fuck Marcus.”
“Yeah,” Rusty smiled. “Fuck Marcus!”
“Besides,” Walter added, “She’ll heal up all nice and new right quick, once she’s turned.”
“Yep, all beautiful. Aww man,” Rusty said, “I wish I had time to fuck her before he changes her.”
“Yeah, in your wet dreams,” Misty said in a blah monotone.
Walter chuckled. “She’d mash yer balls to puddin’ before you even got close, vamp or not.”
Misty snorted, eventually becoming a laugh that sounded more like a series of hiccups. They dragged Vivien through the opening into the tunnel, where at the end the other vampires sat in wait.
7
Fulton Blake, along with several policemen and bloodhounds scoured the town from end to end in search of Vivien, and several others that had gone missing, even through the woods. Although all were warned about the potential pit, and told to watch their step, no
such pit was ever found. If anyone had actually stepped into it, they
would have fallen to their death, but it was as if some cloaking device didn’t permit them to see it. It wasn’t until three years later in the fall of 1984, when a gang of teenagers who called themselves the Dragons, accidentally chased a boy named Ramsey Tysor into this pit that Jeremiah’s Woods became a gated community. Though no people were allowed in, some things still lived there.
The searches went on for months. Each time they exhausted every avenue, more people would wind up missing, and the searches would begin anew. For Fulton and Samantha Blake there was no rest. Even when the police stopped searching, the Blake’s continued, posting flyers, stopping at every door with pictures of their daughter, looking in every corner, alley, bush, and bog.
One night when they drove home they found one of their flyers taped face down to their door. Scrawled on the blank side in what looked like a combination of mud and soot were these words: STOP LOOKING OR WE’LL COME FOR YOU TOO.
Of course, they took this to the police. No fingerprints were found, although it could easily be discerned by the sloppy writing that the person had been using their fingers to form the letters. They did not stop looking for their daughter. Soon after, they were the hunted.
8
“Ah,” Marcus Brindisi exclaimed. “You’ve brought her. Why are you dragging her? Is that a bruise on her eye?” He stood up from his stone chair. The other vampires at his side watched with eager anticipation.
“She attacked us,” Spangler said, “We had to defend ourselves.”
“Silence! Are you telling me you let this human almost get the best of you? When all you had to do was grab her by the arms. You’re stronger than this.” He pointed down at Vivien with disgust (not at her beauty which was undeniable) but at her lowliness as a human.
“We’re sorry sir,” Walter said. “But it was necessary. She tried
to get away as soon as we opened the cage, before we could grab her.”
“I see,” Marcus said. “Are you not quick, not strong, and not prepared? Did you expect her to simply acquiesce and come willingly?”
Walter shook his head. Rusty looked down at the floor. Misty seemed mystified; quite possibly by the use of the word acquiesce.
“Never mind! Bring her to me!”
They stood her up and began to walk her toward the upraised platform of rock on which Marcus’ stone throne sat. Vivien began to awake. Through a haze of unnatural slumber, much like the one she would soon be plunged into, she viewed her captors. They were lined up in a semi-circle facing her. She tried to break away from Spangler and Walter, but this time their grip on her was strong, resolute. Her biceps ached where they held her. Marcus did not grab her before his face and teeth changed; not until he bit into her neck, draining away her lifeblood; and Vivien cried out in both pain and ecstasy, as he lifted her head skyward. It was uncontrollable. When he was satiated he slit his wrist with a sharp fingernail, lifting it to her, blood running in rivulets down his forearm, bidding her to drink.
She shook her head. The others forced Vivien closer, their grip on her increasing, and she yelped. More came around, forcing her mouth open as Marcus placed his dripping wrist above it. Blood flowed into her mouth, washing over her lips, her teeth, her tongue, turning them red. She drank because she had no choice, and would become one of them, because all choices had been taken away from her. In the next few weeks she would not only come to accept her fate, but embrace it.
9
The following day they brought blood to her in a jewel encrusted chalice to her cell, as if this would somehow make it more appetizing. She refused to drink and they did not force her. They knew the hunger would eventually become overwhelming.
Two nights later they brought her a corpse, and left it in front of her cell. She screamed and backed away to the far wall. The man was in tatters, ghostly white but for one side of his face where his skin had been flayed. The open flap that hung and jiggled over his neck revealed a mass of flesh that had turned black but for a few puncture wounds where blood slowly oozed out like red pus. She was horrified, not just by the sight of it, but the unexpected craving it evoked in her.
“Take it away!” she screamed. “I don’t want it!”
Edward was there. He grabbed a handful of the corpse’s hair and lifted it. The woman named Arianna had a double sided axe in her hand, and she swung it wide, her hair swinging with it, as it severed the head of the dead man from his body. The blood did not spray so much as pour out of the man’s head as Edward held it up higher, the headless body slowly sinking to one side, crumpling in on itself.
“Open the cell,” Edward said. James and Misty were the other ones with him. Misty held the keys but apparently didn’t want the responsibility, so she handed them over to James, who opened the cell. Vivien crawled up onto her bed and pulled the sheets over her. They walked in with the dripping head.
“Hold her,” Edward said. They pinned her arms and legs with relative ease. They were strong and she didn’t have much strength left in her. They held her mouth open and she clamped down on James’s finger. She wasn’t aware what reserves of strength she did have yet, but when she bit down and yanked the finger tore off, snapping bone and tearing muscle, squirting blood into her mouth. She spat, gagged, but the blood had already made the hunger worse.
James’s cry sounded incredibly effeminate. Edward punched Vivien in the face with his free hand, rocking her head backward, then forward violently as if it were a weeble wobble plastic toy. She laughed at him, blood staining the fangs that had sprouted. Edward held the severed head over her face and the still warm blood dripped into her mouth. Her struggles began to cease. James was clutching his wounded hand, blood still spurting through his fingers. Arianna tore a
strip of cloth from her dress and wrapped his hand.
“Don’t worry,” she said, “It will grow back,” in her exotic, dulcimer tones.
“James?” Edward said, still holding the head, letting blood drip into Vivien’s mouth. “Are you okay?” His friend was behind him, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the girl, just in case.
“Yeah,” James said, “Never been better.”
Edward nodded. Vivien lunged at him, and he thought she was going to attack him, but she snatched the head out of his hands, and bit at its neck, inhaling the blood, suckling at it like a teet. She stopped abruptly, feeling her teeth with her fingers, sliding them along her bloody incisors. She realized they had grown. Vivien
reeled her head up toward the ceiling, wailing, crying out not from physical pain, but the horrible awareness of who she had become. She was now powerless to resist it. She sank her teeth into the corpse’s face and tore the nose off the ghastly head. Her teeth ground and crunched on it, breaking cartilage. The four watched her in fascination. Vivien saw them and said, “No.” No. She spat out the chunk of flesh, her stomach churning and heaving. She started to gag, and after several seconds felt the bile come up and vomited over the edge of the bed.
“Well, it’s a start,” Edward said.
She looked up at him. “I…hate…you. For what you’ve done to me, what you did to my friends.”
Edward smiled. “This too shall pass.”
“Fuck you!”
“Love to, when is good for you?”
“GET OUT!!”
“Let’s just go,” James said. “Bitch is crazy with it right now. Let her chill a bit. I already lost a finger.”
“It’ll grow back,” Edward said.
“That’s what I told him,” Arianna seconded.
Misty stood staring, no one was sure at what, and no one cared. They got out, locking the door, leaving Vivien alone in her cell once more.
10
Fulton and his wife Samantha had just about cleared the town in the last few days, and all along county lines, scouring every possibility, coming up with nothing. It was one night, just shortly after dark, as they were headed home from one of these searches, that Fulton Blake had his first encounter with the undead.
As they approached their house they noticed a man standing in the doorway, in what looked to be a suit and tie, backlit from the window, by a sofa side lamp they kept on in the living room. He leaned against the doorway, arms crossed, legs scissored across each other casually. “I thought we told you to stop looking,” the man rasped, barely above a whisper.
Samantha grabbed Fulton’s arm nervously.
“Who are you?” Blake demanded.
“You may call me Lucio, although I prefer you didn’t call me anything. Since you don’t listen, one of you is going to have to die now.”
“Fulton?” Samantha pleaded.
“I’m calling the police.” Blake attempted to reach for the door. Lucio moved fast, faster than anyone Fulton Blake had ever seen, going from a casual lean to a full out stride, and seizing both of Blake’s wrists.
The man was indeed wearing a three piece black suit with a white shirt and a black string tie, Blake saw as the man with the slick backed hair grinned and squeezed his wrists painfully. “I could crush every bone in your hands, but I’ll take your indiscretion out on the lady.”
He let go of Fulton’s hand and backhanded Samantha across the face, her blonde hair flying, and throwing her to the side.
“No!” Fulton shouted, grabbing Lucio. He was backhanded even more forcefully than his wife, the vampire shrugging him off like dead leaves. He fell to the ground beside Samantha.
Lucio smiled down at them with wickedly pointed teeth, and
Samantha’s and Fulton’s eyes flew open. “We have your daughter.
She is not coming back. She is ours now.”
“You bastard!” Blake shot up, and the vampire hit him, bringing him down again with what felt like an anvil against his chest. Samantha screamed as Fulton clutched his chest, all the air temporarily knocked out of him. Lucio kicked out in anger at her scream, striking her in the face with his shiny black dress shoe. He didn’t stop there but continued to kick her in the face while she was down.
Fulton came to in time to see the horror of what was happening to his wife, the foot coming down again and again. By the third strike she had no scream left in her. By the twelfth her face was nothing but mush, reduced to something that resembled raw hamburger by this monstrosity. Blake cried out in agony and horror and despair. He leapt up at the monster, actually managing to gouge him under his eyes before the vampire had time to properly turn around and fend him off. Sadly he’d missed the eyes themselves.
Lucio grabbed him by the wrists again, twisting both until Blake was sure they’d snap. But it wasn’t the vampire’s intent. He spun Blake around, lifting him off the ground, spinning him 360 degrees around several times until he let loose, and Fulton went soaring, crashing into his door, through his door in a shower of wood splinters.
“Should have left well enough alone old man,” the vampire said, walking off into the dark. The wounded, despairing, physically broken man that fell behind that doorway was to become another man; a man with a vendetta that would rise from the ashes to claim those unlucky enough to meet the business end of his stake; a man who would make Lucio regret his words: Should have left well enough alone.
11
In the months to come not only young adults were
disappearing, but children began to disappear as well. Distraught parents would have been even more horrified to realize that they were not being taken as sexual slaves, but as blood sacrifices. Even among the vampires certain sects practiced strange rites, mostly having to do with the blood of the innocent. Some were buried alive still kicking and screaming; others became part of an elaborate feast. It wasn’t until 1985 that one of them was turned, although Betty Leesburg had never been the first. Centuries ago they turned the young, but it was found to be unfeasible. Although they did not age physically, they retained their age mentally as well. No one was ever really sure who turned Betty Leesburg, but among the undead there was an undeniable suspicion that it was a joke played on them by one of The Others.
And in those months, Blake continued the search for his daughter, and the unholy fiend who’d murdered his wife. He saw all the flyers nailed to trees, the pictures on milk cartons, and under car windshield wipers- the missing children. He could not only imagine the hell their parents were going through, but felt a great well of sympathy and sorrow for their plight, for his hell was theirs.
He carried a sack full of things he’d purchased, things he’d taken, and things he’d made, slung over his back- Holy water, crosses, stakes, and a battered copy of the Holy Bible. It was still daylight out but he knew what he was dealing with. Should darkness set on him, he’d be prepared. Anyone searching through his satchel would think that a forty-something year old who believed in vampires was a crazy old coot. But he was on to the rumors and gossip behind the headlines. He’d seen the truth firsthand, and no one ever truly saw what exactly was going on.
The police would never find the “man” that had killed his wife, or the “men” that had taken his daughter. He could only pray that at least she was still alive, and not one of them, but he didn’t have high hopes. Either way they’d pay for what they’d done to his family. He’d spent nearly a month grieving, which wasn’t very long, when he decided that the only thing that would keep him going on was to move to action. His grief turned into anger, his despair into
resolve. He would kill them. They would pay.
12
The streets were unrelenting; giving no quarter, no surcease. They offered him nothing but more missing persons. He began to believe what he suspected all along. They had no den aboveground. They lived underground, in the pit. He would have to go into the woods and find a way in.
After months of searching, however, one night, just after dusk, he found not one, but two vampires. They were in the middle of feeding. In the darkness behind the brick building, wet with rain from the night before, and sticky with newspapers, the man crouched down behind a pair of steel trashcans looked like any homeless man, to the casual glancing eye. What tipped Blake off was the one standing behind him, watching, in non-broken boots, and a brown leather duster; not homeless wear at all.
Blake ducked behind the corner of the building, careful not to be seen or heard as he pulled a wooden stake out of his satchel. Apparently their hearing was better than he thought. As he stepped around the corner, a small patter his sneakers made in a puddle was picked up by the vampires. A car passing turned the corner, throwing Blake into shadow, but illu
minating the vampires. The one feeding looked up with blood stained teeth and lips. He had brown shoulder length hair that covered both sides of his face, and most of his eyes, but Blake could still see the unearthly brown-orange glow emanating from them. He hissed at Blake. The other one, startled into action, rushed toward him, at first running, then leaping through the air.
Blake was so unprepared for this he almost dropped the stake. He had precious little time to react, and although the vampire was tall and lean, he hit Blake with all the force of a defensive linebacker. He slammed into the ground butt first into a puddle. The vampire had him on his back. My God, he thought, the strength. He did all he could do, taking the stake two-handed, and with a swift
upward motion, plunged it into the vampire atop him. He felt
something tear and pop underneath the point (perhaps the belly button), as the wood sunk into the thing’s stomach. The vampire rolled off of Blake, the stake embedded in its gut, onto its back. Instinctively Blake knew he had to act, and act now, although he didn’t think about it much, but simply reacted. His first kill, although fumbling, proved he was already thinking like a vampire hunter. Blake quickly spun off his back, yanked the stake out, and jabbed it down into the creature’s chest. The vampire emitted such an unearthly shriek as if thousands of bats were pouring from its vocal chords, he almost stopped there. But the thing wasn’t dead. Blake hadn’t hit the heart. He pulled it out, plunging it again, harder, deeper. A jet of blood splashed into his face. Again, jab, jab, jab. The creature howled and screeched in agony. And suddenly it ceased.
This happened in under a minute and the other one was just rising from his kill, perplexed, unable to interpret what had just happened. Fulton had picked up his bag and slung it over his shoulder again. He knew he was too far to use the stake, and he might not get as lucky with this one if the vamp decided to rush him. If? No, when. He took advantage of the beast’s confused state and reached blindly into his still open bag, and pulled out a cross. It wasn’t what he’d wanted, but he held it up now, in hopes of warding the thing off. It had the intended effect, to some degree. The thing hissed at him, cocking its head to one side like a confused or curious dog. It backed up about an inch, and then decided it wasn’t scared at all. He saw the vampire’s intent. Just before it ran at him, he reached in the satchel again.
The Pit in the Woods: A Mercy Falls Mythos Page 27
