Around

by Glenn Rolfe

  * * *

  “Come on, Jonas,” John pleaded. “You know I wouldn’t make you do this if I didn’t need you.”

  “But I’m just gonna sit there like a third wheel. I hate being the odd man out with you and your girlfriends.”

  “Dude, Sheena. Her name is Sheena.” John stopped to light a cigarette. “Like, what are the freaking chances? She’s a punk rocker, she’s in town for the next couple days, and she wants to make out with me.”

  “What do you need me for then?” Jonas said, sulking and wiping down his bass with a can of Pledge and a rag.

  John got up and sat next to him, slapping him on the back.

  “Dude,” he said, “that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you if you could stop rubbing that bass like it’s your dick. She’s got a cousin vacationing up here with her. She promised her I’d bring someone for her.”

  “What?” he stopped wiping the guitar. “Is her cousin cute?”

  “Cute? Dude, she’s a babe, I promise you.”

  “You saw her?”

  “From a distance, but she’s got big tits, man. I mean, you’re gonna just stare at these beauties.”

  Jonas reddened. “An-and you think she’ll like me?”

  “Dude, you’re in a punk rock band, she’s gonna be all over you.”

  His friend’s grin was one of pure delirious hope and joy.

  Jonas looked at his watch. “But it’s after ten. Are you sure they’ll be there? What if….”

  John poked out his cigarette and slipped it into the Beefaroni can they kept stashed behind Jonas’s bass amp. “Don’t even wuss out on me, dude. There’s no super creeper out stealing kids. There’s no Chester the Molester wandering around the beach. People are just being paranoid.”

  “I’m not being a wuss,”” Jonas said. “I just…what if the cops see us out. They’re gonna send us home.”

  John clamped a hand to his friend’s shoulder. “We’ll slink between houses until we get to Old Orchard Street, then we’ll hurry down Walnut Street, cross Grand Ave and down the alley beside the Royal Alliance. That’s where Sheena said they’d meet us.”

  Jonas shook his head. “If we get in trouble tonight, I’m gonna kill you.”

  “Whatever. We got, like, twenty minutes to get there. Let’s fucking go already.”

  As they were about to go out the garage door, Jonas halted.

  “Why didn’t you ask Brandon to go with you?” Jonas looked down at his shoes then back up again.

  “Brandon’s older than us,” John said. “He gets chicks all the time.”

  “Yeah, or you just thought Sheena would like him more than you.”

  “Don’t be a dick,” John said. Jonas wasn’t totally wrong; Brandon could probably steal any girl from either of them, but he didn’t even consider Brandon for his wingman. Jonas was a cool kid; he just didn’t know it. “I’d rather have you by my side, man. And Sheena’s cousin is gonna dig you. Trust me.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Dude, you don’t give yourself enough credit. You deserve a girl just like anyone else. More than anyone else.”

  “You really think so?” Jonas said, wringing his hands. John thought the visible battle between Jonas’s self-doubt and hope was perfect.

  He put his arm around Jonas’s neck and shoved the door open with his foot.

  “What did I say? Trust me.”

  * * *

  Hurrying down Bradbury Street, they saw headlights burst from their right from the direction of the park. Cops always sat around in the dirt lot next to the small park.

  “Get down,” John shouted.

  He shoved Jonas into a thorny patch of bushes. The kid yipped and whined. John wasn’t completely silent himself; the thorns were painful.

  They crouched as low as they could and waited with bated breath for the car to roll by.

  It was a cop, all right. John ducked his head, hoping Jonas would follow his lead.

  “Oh my god, that was too close. Maybe we should go back.”

  “Dude, we’re almost there.”

  John watched as the police cruiser turned left. Perfect.

  “Come on. Let’s hurry.”

  They hurried, licking their thorn-inflicted wounds, to Walnut Street, across West Grand and slipped down Boisvert Street between some of the beachside rentals.

  “There she is,” he said, nudging Jonas in the side.

  “Where’s her cousin?”

  Sheena was there alone, but she grinned from ear to ear when she saw John and jogged to meet him. They wrapped their arms around one another and kissed. He had a feeling they would need to find a very quiet place to disappear.

  After making out with Sheena for a minute, John felt Jonas tugging at his shirt.

  He turned back. “What?”

  “Sorry,” Jonas said, “but where’s her cousin?”

  Sheena wrapped her arms around John’s waist as they both turned toward Jonas.

  “Tanya couldn’t sneak out,” she said, her voice husky for a girl. “Her parents are like a couple of hawks. I guess they heard that some kid went missing and decided to keep tabs on their own for once.”

  John watched Jonas shrink.

  “Can I talk to Jonas for a minute?” John asked.

  Sheena just said, “Sure.”

  The two boys walked a few feet away.

  “John,” Jonas whined. “You can’t expect me to stay here and twiddle my thumbs while you two get all…you know.”

  “Listen, man. It sucks about Tanya. I’m totally sorry, but that doesn’t mean I should lose out, too.”

  “Arrrgh, I knew this was gonna happen.”

  “Just walk the beach for like twenty minutes. Give me that. Go down past the pier and back.”

  “No way.”

  “Please,” John said, looking over at Sheena in her cropped Damned t-shirt and striped skirt. “She’s, like, the girl of my dreams.”

  “Go hang out with her, but I’m not staying here or walking the beach like a total loser. I’ll just head back to my house.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, you know what? Have fun with your punk rock girl. Maybe I’ll just see if I can get one of the cops to drive me home.”

  Jonas stormed off back toward the pathway that led to Boisvert Street.

  “Sorry, man,” John yelled. “I’ll catch up with you tomorrow at practice.”

  He watched Jonas shuffle down the beach with his hands in his pockets, his shoulders slouched. He felt bad for the guy, but, looking over at Sheena, he didn’t feel that bad. It wasn’t that long a walk for the kid.

  “Is your friend okay?” Sheena asked.

  “He’ll be fine. His place is only a couple streets over from here. We’re jamming tomorrow, so I’ll see him then.”

  “That’s so cool,” she said.

  * * *

  Jonas wondered if the cousin, Tanya, even existed, and now he had to walk home alone.

  I never should have come out here, he thought.

  He had sand in his sneakers, something most people who lived in a beach town learned to deal with, but he never had. It bothered him to no end. Stopping at the blacktop of Boisvert Street, he pulled off one shoe and shook it free of the beach dirt. He did the same with the other shoe and heard something thud to the ground in the shadows up ahead.

  Silence followed.

  Somebody in one of the rentals was watching the Red Sox game. The commentators were bickering about Jim Rice. A scream came from another window, effectively getting Jonas’s already-on-edge haunches up.

  The slim throughway looked to stretch out for miles, growing along with the fear crawling over him. In each dark corner, he suddenly imagined the beasties and ghoulies from his worst dreams. A one-armed vagrant begging for change as
maggots dropped from his mouth, the Xenomorph from Alien slipping from a window and descending upon him, and damn it if he didn’t think of the movie Cujo every time he saw a big dog. He imagined the Saint Bernard awaiting him at the other end of the street, growling and ready to chase him to his death.

  Jonas was still holding his left shoe in his hands, staring down the road, when the man appeared up ahead.

  “Fuck you doing?” the man slurred.

  “I…I was just going home,” Jonas managed.

  The man turned his back. A second later Jonas heard him pissing against one of the garage doors up ahead.

  The man hocked up a loogy, spat, muttered something incoherent and then stumbled to one of the rental buildings to the left. Jonas put his shoe on and began down the dark street, hoping the drunk wouldn’t harass him. He reached the triple set of garage doors where the man had taken a leak, when another form emerged from the edge of the building.

  Jonas gasped, spooked.

  A tall, slim man stepped between Jonas and his view of West Grand Avenue.

  This is why I should’ve stayed home. This is why I didn’t want to come out tonight. This is the fiend in the night.

  Jonas tried to skirt to the right of the man, but the man followed his movements. He tried to the left, and the man mirrored his move again.

  “I’m sorry,” Jonas said, his voice revealing the quiver in his lips. “I’m just trying to get home before my parents kill me.”

  The man stood without saying a word.

  Oh shit, he thought. Just turn around and run.

  To hell with what John and his little punk girlfriend would say or think. Let them tease the hell out of him or swear at him for coming back and ruining their little rendezvous.

  Maybe he could make it by the guy if he ran, get right past and run until he was in his own yard. All the Funyuns and Cherry Coke he’d consumed before John showed up at his door were now rising from the floor of his stomach. He imagined them lifting from the ocean floor of his guts like particles of dead sea life coming alive and floating upward. Coldness spread in his veins.

  He stood unable to move, let alone run either way.

  The man in the shadows stepped forward, his shoes clicking on the tar.

  Jonas whimpered where he stood.

  The man came closer, one clicking shoe after the other until his shape seemed to swallow Jonas’s.

  “I just want to go home,” Jonas whimpered. He had tears in his eyes, his chin quivering.

  The man with the long black hair and long black coat stepped aside and gestured for Jonas to pass.

  After a few seconds of uncertainty, Jonas moved ahead. He got about twenty steps when the clicking of the man’s shoes started after him.

  He glanced over his shoulder and saw the man following him.

  His heart sped in his chest.

  Jonas broke into a run. West Grand Avenue was just ahead, and with it, the promise of lights and life. Safety.

  He was nearly there when he noticed the clicking sounds of the man’s shoes had disappeared. Stopping ten feet from West Grand, he dared a look back.

  The street behind him was empty.

  He let out a small, nervous laugh.

  God, I am a chickenshit, he thought.

  He exhaled, the tense moments fleeting, and turned to leave.

  The man blocked his way again.

  “What…wh-wh-where did—”

  “Shhh, my little friend,” the man said.

  “Puh, puh, please—”

  The man placed his long, skinny finger to Jonas’s lips, leaned to his ear and whispered, “You were very much right to be frightened.”

  Jonas let out a whining sound. His bladder and its Cherry Coke felt heavy inside him.

  Something sharp punctured the side of his neck as the man’s hand landed upon him in a blur. Jonas moaned; his bladder let go.

  He felt so light that he could no longer feel his feet on the ground. His back was suddenly against the last building. The man had moved them into the darker shadows at the end of the street. West Grand and its promise of light taunted him.

  His thoughts were growing fuzzy as the man was suddenly kissing him on the neck. Jonas heard his own pulse, his own heartbeat thumping in his ears. The chill in his marrow dissipated, encouraging his senseless fears to follow. The corners of his lips turned upward.

  What a wonderful night.

  The stranger at his neck inhaled sharply, then exhaled in an exhilarated fashion.

  Jonas couldn’t be certain, but he thought the man’s features had shifted. He wondered if he could go home now. He wondered if he still wanted to.

  He was so tired.

  “Any last words, my friend?” the man said.

  “What?”

  The man hissed, bringing the sense of dread back tenfold. Jonas hardly had time to think, He’s not human.

  Before the stranger bit a chunk of his throat out and spat it to the side.

  He’s a vam—

  * * *

  John couldn’t believe he was getting laid. He moved awkwardly, thrusting himself into Sheena as she moaned and whimpered beneath him.

  She sounded like she might start crying any moment. It was all very confusing and fast.

  He sensed someone standing beside them before he opened his eyes and saw the dress shoes in the sand.

  “What the hell?” he said.

  Sheena opened her eyes and screamed.

  Her cry cut out as something blurred between them. A thin, dark line appeared across her milky white throat.

  Blood seeped from the wound; her mouth opened and closed, her voice lost.

  Her hands left John’s hips and drifted to the oozing wound.

  John climbed from her, his penis shrivelling. He pulled free from between her legs, the condom she’d helped him put on clinging to hold on.

  He watched in silent horror as the man with long black hair and a dark trench coat buried his face in the girl’s wound.

  This isn’t happening.

  He stood and stumbled a few steps backward.

  Sheena’s legs trembled and then stopped.

  Her body was perfectly still while the stranger rose and set his sights upon him.

  Blood covered his ugly features. This was no man.

  A monster, a vampire had just fed right in front of him.

  John stared in disbelief, his pecker out for the world. The creature of the night, its eyes red as the blood he’d just seen running freely from the dead girl in the sand in the light of the full moon above, flew at him.

  They were in the sky, rising above the beach when the creature bit into the top of his head with a fury.

  John Chaplin felt an immense pain and then nothing else.

  * * *

  Somewhere in the night, Gabriel took four more late-night wanderers.

  Two were drunk men hiding away, kissing where the last partiers of the night wouldn’t see them. He snatched the men and took them below the pier where he’d taken the first man weeks ago. He found another teenage girl in an altered state laughing out loud as she drew flowers in the beach sand with her finger. The last person was an older gentleman smoking on the front stoop of his house on the way out of town.

  Gabriel crawled through his bedroom window at their rental cottage, still in full vampire form; he’d been unable to pull back the beast within. No control, no restraint, the blood of his victims had him delirious. His hands trembled. He stumbled into his coffin and tried to close the lid. The bloodlust had him too high to be concerned. Instead, he fumbled with the lid until he finally had it in place.

  It seemed an eternity before his body relaxed and sleep finally took him.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “I want you to sit down,” Rocky’s mother said. Rocky plopp
ed down at the kitchen table with his Pop Tart and a glass of chocolate milk. Her seriousness worried him. He was waiting for her to tell him more kids had been reported missing and that summer was effectively cancelled. He thought of the most awful result– – never getting to see November again before her family up and disappeared from town forever.

  She placed a hand on his shoulder as his father came singing into the room.

  “Hey, buddy,” his dad greeted him before dancing to the coffee machine for a refill. “Did you tell him yet?”

  “I was just about to,” his mother replied.

  “What? What is it?”

  His dad slipped an arm around his mother. The man’s big grin eased Rocky’s worries. Now he was sitting up, dying to know what the big secret was.

  “You have your driver’s exam on July 9th,” his mom said.

  “Oh my god,” Rocky said, standing up, hitting his leg on the table. “That’s awesome. You guys are awesome.” He gave his mother a huge hug; his dad patted him on the back. Rocky gave them both a kiss on the cheek.

  “Thank you, guys, so much,” he said. “I’ve got to tell November.”

  “Who?” his mother asked.

  “Where’s Julia?” Rocky said.

  His dad sipped his coffee, gave Rocky’s mom a kiss on the cheek and set his mug on the counter. “She’s heading to work, which is just where I’m heading, too.”

  “What? You have to work today?”

  “Not real work,” his mother answered. “He’s going over to your uncle’s to start building the new porch.”

  “You want to come along?” his dad asked. “We could use an extra hand.”

  Rocky was torn. Part of him did want to help. He felt he owed his uncle all the help he could give with what the man had bestowed upon him, but the thought of sharing his news with November won out.

  “I can’t, I mean, I totally would, but—”

  “It’s the girl, isn’t it?” his father said. “This…November?”

  Rocky grinned and nodded.

  “I get it.” His dad winked and headed for the door. “Bye, hon.”

  His mother waved his dad off. “Don’t forget to drink some water between beers, please.”

  His dad smirked and closed the door.

  Rocky gave his mom another hug and rushed down to his sister’s bedroom.