Fatal Bargain

by Caroline B. Cooney

  And if they ever did build that new mall here, on this very site, she, Roxanne, would never shop in it. Because who knew? Who knew where else a vampire could dig in? Who knew what cracks in new buildings his stinking spirit might find?

  “Hurry up,” said Lacey. Her voice was taut with urgency.

  Roxanne moved to the center of the group. Let Sherree and Randy go first. Let the vampire grab their ankles and yank on their hair. Roxanne hung on to Lacey’s waist.

  The group was going too slowly for Roxanne. She began herding her friends along, as if she were a sheepdog. “Go on, go on,” she said, practically nipping them. “We don’t have all night!”

  Randy and Sherree reached the small landing at the top of the stairs.

  Sherree took the first step down.

  Nothing happened.

  She took a second step.

  Roxanne could almost hear six separate hearts whacking chest walls, pumping furiously. Her own heart was going insane with the need to move, to run, to race, to get out of here while there was time! “What are you waiting for?” shouted Roxanne. “Get going!”

  Nobody was in the tower now. Three of them were on the stairs, three were crowded onto the little landing.

  Don’t look back! thought Bobby. Whatever I saw when I was pinned in the air, it’s back there! I must not look back. I must not look down. I just have to get out! Out! Out!

  Bobby caught the nearest hand. It was Lacey’s. He had never held anything so gratefully.

  Bobby would have shoved the rest forward, used all his athlete’s strength and just pushed them all down the stairs, except what if somebody fell and broke a leg? They had enough problems as it was. “Hurry up,” Bobby whispered. “Get going. What is taking so long?”

  He could not tell whether he was talking out loud or not.

  Outside, he thought, all I want is to be outside.

  Sherree, incredibly, began taunting the vanished vampire. “You did-n’t get us,” she called, singsong. “We’re go-ing ho-ome. Nan-ny nan-ny boo-boo.”

  Why, Roxanne asked herself, were people like Sherree allowed on the planet? Enough of this, thought Roxanne. I have to get home and scrub off an entire layer of skin.

  Roxanne shoved through the silly delaying pack and plunged forward.

  Her brain turned into a mental map of the mansion. Nothing mattered but exits and speed.

  First set of stairs, she thought. Turn right in upper hall. Go down second set of stairs. Turn at bottom. Enter abandoned dining room. Go through window. Reach porch. Run like the very —

  But she could no longer run.

  She could no longer move at all.

  She had collided with the vampire.

  Or his cloak.

  It was not like running into a wet sheet hanging out to dry on a clothesline. It was more like sinking into the mud of low tide. The stench and vapor of the vampire hit Roxanne’s face, filling her open mouth and her nostrils as if she had fallen into pudding.

  I refuse to let this happen! thought Roxanne. She shoved both hands forward, with all her might, to push him out of her escape route.

  Her hands went right through his body.

  “I’m not entirely here yet,” the vampire explained. “It’s because I need a meal. I’m becoming extremely hungry, you know. It’s all this time you are wasting. All this running around you’re forcing me to do.”

  The vampire had begun walking up the stairs.

  Bobby, Zach, Sherree, Randy, and Roxanne were forced to back up, also.

  Roxanne, coughing and spitting, tried to wipe the vampire off her face.

  Sherree was sobbing and beating on Randy with her fists. “Tell him to stop this!” she said. “He’s earned his money. Fire him, Randy!”

  The vampire continued to sweep them up the stairs.

  Sherree thinks it’s an act, thought Lacey. How astonishing. All this evidence and she still does not believe in vampires.

  Lacey stood her ground. She hung on to the railing and dug her sneakers into the stair treads. “We are not going back in your tower,” she said. “It does not matter how hard you shove. We are not moving back up those stairs.”

  But the five other teenagers moved around Lacey the way water moves around a rock in the stream. Backward, up the narrow tower stairs they moved.

  “Don’t cooperate with him!” cried Lacey. “Don’t go back in that tower. That’s where his power is! Out here on this staircase, he can’t do much.”

  “You are incorrect,” said the vampire. He remained courteous.

  Lacey did not. She aimed a savage kick at his shins.

  But of course, he had not fully materialized, and like Roxanne, she found her foot entering a sort of gel that sucked and clung.

  Lacey lost her balance, and fell back.

  It was Randy who caught her, grabbing her under the arms, hauling her back against him, dragging her up the stairs.

  “All right!” shouted Sherree. “All right! I believe in you! It’s okay. Don’t get mad! We’ll talk. We’ll do anything you want!”

  The vampire’s chuckle was like broken glass, crunching under their shoes.

  “No!” screamed Lacey, fighting Randy. “Don’t go back in there! Stay out of that tower! We can hold him off! There’s strength in numbers!” Lacey hung on to the banisters.

  “You have a discussion to complete, as I recall,” said the vampire. “The rules were made quite clear to you.”

  “We are not going to have a discussion on any subject whatsoever!” screamed Lacey. “We are going home!” Lacey grabbed at the retreating bodies of the others, trying to force them to stand next to her. What is the matter with them? she thought. Don’t they understand?

  “Regrettably,” said the vampire, sounding rather like a guidance counselor, “due to Lacey’s interfering and unpleasant manner, I am not going to be able to facilitate your discussion after all.”

  “Push your way through!” shrieked Lacey. “Don’t —”

  But the vampire rose up the stairs like fog rolling in from the sea.

  His misty blanket enveloped them in his gelatinous pollution and they could not breathe under it or near it, and they staggered back into the tower.

  The weird sick light of the vampire illuminated the circular space.

  Roxanne thought she would drown in the vampire’s smell. When will I ever be able to wash this off? she thought. She began to sob.

  Zach’s trembling began again, even deeper and more complete than it had been before. Bobby felt his mind leaving his skull, felt himself dividing, floating, coming apart. Randy felt terror filling his body; it was inside him, slithering around.

  The tower seemed smaller than before.

  Or else the vampire was taking up more space than he had.

  “You made it worse, Lacey,” Sherree said furiously.

  “I did not make it worse!” cried Lacey. “It can’t get any worse!”

  “If I had just moved faster,” sobbed Sherree, “I’d be out of here by now.”

  “There is,” said the vampire, “only one way to get out of here.”

  His voice silenced them. They looked up. They saw. The vampire’s face was present now, his skin the color of mushrooms. His teeth were as green as seaweed. He wiped them against his sleeve until they were white once more.

  Sherree whimpered like a kicked puppy.

  “The way out,” said the vampire, “is not through a door.”

  The vampire’s teeth filled more and more of his mouth. “The way out,” said the vampire, “is not through a window.”

  “What way, then?” cried Sherree. “I’ll do anything. Just tell me how to get out.”

  “You must choose my victim,” repeated the vampire. He smiled. The teeth slid over his lips and touched his chin. “Although you have not discussed the issue as I requested, I think you all know, if you consider it for a moment, who has caused the most trouble here.”

  Sherree nodded. Without the slightest hesitation, she said, “I no
minate Lacey.”

  “She’s not running for office!” shouted Roxanne. “You don’t nominate her.”

  “Yes, I do. The vampire wants a name, and that’s what ‘nominate’ means. I name Lacey.” Sherree was calm. Relaxed. She was comfortable with her decision.

  Sherree’s calm spread through the tower just as the vampire’s stench had. Bobby’s mind seemed to return. Zach’s trembling lessened. Randy’s terror dwindled. Roxanne’s anger quieted.

  They looked at Lacey.

  And the vampire, too. The vampire looked at Lacey.

  “Lacey,” repeated the vampire, as if tasting the syllables before he tasted the victim. “Lacey.”

  Sherree is giving me to him, thought Lacey.

  She was unable to believe it. She had been sure they would stick together as a group. But no. Darwin was correct. Survival of the fittest. What it meant was — throw out one member to save the rest.

  How primitive humankind is, thought Lacey.

  How sophisticated the vampire is compared to our species. We cannot last a night without caving in. He can last for years, without food, without light, without anything.

  The vampire’s eyes were soft and yearning. They fixed on Lacey but did not meet her stare. The vampire was studying her throat.

  Lacey waited for sturdier minds to kick in. Roxanne. Zachary. Bobby. She doubted if anybody could count on Randy in a crisis. Clearly not Sherree. But the rest…they would come through for her. They would not abandon her. Not to this. They would save her! She knew they would!

  “Probably not, my dear,” said the vampire gently, reading her thoughts. “It is always a shock to learn how cruel one’s supposed friends can be.”

  Lacey wrenched her eyes off the vampire.

  She turned to witness the actions of her supposed friends.

  Sherree was already out the tower door.

  Bobby’s head was tilted slightly. He drew his glance away from Lacey, and then he drew himself to the tower door.

  Roxanne massaged her wrists, as if she had sprained them. She was pouring her attention into her own body — carefully, calculatedly, forgetting Lacey’s body.

  Zach smiled at her nervously. He seemed embarrassed. And ready to go.

  They had accepted Sherree’s nomination.

  Without speaking, they had voted.

  Lacey’s mind was flat and without words or thoughts. Perhaps this was how newborn babies were, before words and knowledge and experience were acquired to fill the void. Lacey so completely could not believe the other five were abandoning her that her mind abandoned itself rather than accept the truth.

  The vampire drifted slightly closer. His fangs seemed to lengthen, like fence posts coming out of the ground.

  The five safe teenagers moved through the door.

  “Don’t start till I’m gone,” said Sherree to the vampire.

  The vampire laughed. It sounded like glass breaking on stone. Little glittery sharp pieces of death, falling out of the vampire’s mouth, landing in a pile of used laughter at Lacey’s feet.

  But my life, thought Lacey. My plans. My family. My hopes.

  She was unable to back away from the vampire. Unable to try to join the others. Was terror rooting her to the spot, or had the vampire already reached her, so that she, too, was simply waiting for Sherree to be gone, so the real evening could begin?

  Nobody said good-bye.

  Perhaps it was too normal a word.

  Perhaps you did not say good-bye when you were consigning a friend to hell. Perhaps you just slithered away, like the snake you were.

  Lacey could no longer watch them go.

  She could only watch the vampire approach.

  Chapter 9

  THE CLOAK OF THE vampire moved by itself.

  It swirled toward Lacey.

  Perhaps it had muscles and a will of its own. Perhaps it was the real vampire. Perhaps the thing inside the cloak was just a mirage.

  Lacey’s eyes opened wider and wider. And yet she could see less and less, for the cloak of the vampire filled the entire room, its hem sweeping the ceiling and the floor together.

  Her muscles yanked together, demanding action, but instead of running or fighting, Lacey stiffened and could not move.

  Mom! she thought. Dad! Kevin!

  The cloak rippled in symmetrical folds. It was a wet dripping thing to be used to line caves. And in another moment, it would encircle her; she would be nothing but “an event” to this cape.

  I won’t cry, thought Lacey. I won’t whimper or moan. I certainly will not scream, because he said he liked that best.

  But she knew that she would scream. The scream was building up in the bottom of her lungs, and demanding release; the scream was a living creature all by itself, and it, too, was climbing. She could feel the scream erupting like a volcano.

  Would they hear? The five who had left her here? Would they hear her scream? Would it chill their hearts?

  But they don’t have hearts, thought Lacey. If they had hearts, they would not have left me here.

  The corners of the vampire’s cloak curled up, like fingers.

  Dripping, the fingers crept toward her.

  Sherree was the first one out the door. The first to put a foot on the top step of the stairs. The first to grab the banister and taste the wonderful freedom that waited outside the mansion.

  Sherree envisioned the great outdoors. The real world. The acceptable, ordinary world of normal people doing normal things.

  A world in which you could worry about what to wear, and how to accessorize, and with whom to flirt. A world in which you could do homework, or watch television, or drive a car.

  A safe world.

  Sherree put her mind into that safe world, that world without slime and without terror.

  But her mind would not go.

  Her mind stayed with Lacey.

  Lacey. Alone with that thing? What would it be like for Lacey? Alone? No human beside her? Just Lacey and Evil?

  For Sherree, to whom the parties and friends and shopping and ringing telephones were life, to be alone was the greatest curse of all.

  Lacey is alone, thought Sherree. I nominated her to be alone. Forever and ever.

  This is like the sinking of the Titanic, thought Roxanne. Survivors didn’t even wait for enough passengers to fill the lifeboat; they just rowed away, listening to the screams of the drowning — who could easily have fit into their half-empty boat.

  I’m leaving Lacey, thought Roxanne. This girl with whom I was supposed to be at a party. Laughing. Dancing. Joking. The party went sour, but I went more sour. I left her there. Alone.

  I’ll be free. I’ll be safe. But not unless I row away from a drowning friend.

  Roxanne thought of the high school yearbook. What would they write about Roxanne, after twelve years of school in the same town?

  A flamboyant personality! A girl of vast talent and a brilliant future! But of course…in the end…Roxanne was the first to abandon ship. Let somebody else drown! said Roxanne. I’ll take the lifeboat, thank you. (That was Roxanne’s motto. Who needs Lacey, anyway? Show me the door. That was our friend Roxanne.)

  Roxanne took another step down. And then another. At the same time, the vampire must be taking another step toward Lacey. And then another.

  Would Lacey scream?

  Would Roxanne hear that scream all the nights of her life?

  Bobby had not really been thinking. Being pinned in midair had left him with the strength of a laboratory specimen. He had just sort of been lying on a table, ready for dissection. He was there, and his shape was no different, but his mind had been dulled.

  The only thing that had penetrated the curtain of fear was his athletic training. Team sports. Through the gluey thickness of his mind, Bobby had a sense that he had let his team down. But what was the team? What was the sport? Who was the player?

  Bobby had a sense that he was moving the wrong way down the court. He was going to make a basket for the opposit
e team. Wait, he thought. Wait. Look around. What is the strategy here? Whose team am I on?

  Zach’s mind, however, was sharpened by fear. He could readily imagine the vampire wanting to renegotiate that contract of his. Would Lacey be enough for the vampire? What if the vampire was not satisfied by Lacey alone?

  Sherree plowed to a stop. For one horrible moment Zach thought the vampire had changed his mind, and had once again taken possession of the stairs. That “escape” had all been a cruel joke. Nobody would escape. Not now. Not ever.

  “Hurry up, Sherree!” Zach didn’t want the vampire to realize how slowly they were leaving. Who knew how quickly the vampire’s “event” with Lacey could take place? What if it happened in the few seconds they wasted getting downstairs? What if Lacey merely whetted the vampire’s appetite and the vampire followed them down?

  Zach did not want to be last in line.

  The thing was to get down the stairs, get out that dining room window, get off the sagging porch, and get off this property. As far as Zach was concerned, Randy’s Land Rover could be abandoned until daylight. Or forever. Zach was going to hit the grass running.

  And yet his feet hardly moved.

  At the back of his mind, at the heels of his escape, he saw Lacey.

  Alone.

  A sick taste rose up in his throat. He told himself it was the atmosphere in the mansion. Horror had a flavor and an aroma all its own.

  But he knew in his heart that the truly horrible event of the night was not what the vampire intended to do.

  The horror was himself.

  Leaving Lacey.

  Randy saw an opening between Zach and Roxanne and slipped through, moving to the head of the pack, catching up with Sherree. The house was a pit of blackness below the tower, but Randy could see perfectly. He could see freedom and safety and his life reemerging. He could see clean air and hear the quick start of his car’s engine. In one minute, he would be driving away and never thinking about this again.

  That would be the key, of course. Never to think about this again.

  Because if you thought about it…

  Randy thought about it.

  With all his inner strength, he tried not to, but Randy did not have great inner strength. In fact, here on the stairs, he knew that he possessed nothing but weakness.