PETER AND THE VAMPIRES
#2 In The Series
PETER AND THE MONSTERS
Darren Pillsbury
Copyright 2011 Darren Pillsbury, www.DarrenPillsbury.com
Cover copyright 2011 Darren Pillsbury
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com (or another online retailer of ebooks) and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, used, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Darren Pillsbury.
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Sneak Preview of PETER AND THE CHANGELING
PETER AND THE VAMPIRES
1
Monday morning started off the way all Monday mornings started off: badly.
Peter had a sore throat before he even left the house. It hurt a little to swallow his cereal. Not enough to stay home, but it wasn’t fun to eat. And the Crispy Chocolate flakes were all gone, so all they had was Mom’s raisin bran, which he didn’t really like. The raisins made him think of little bugs hiding in his bowl.
“Hurry, Peter,” Mom said, “you’ve got to catch the bus.”
“Yeah, huwwy, Petah,” mimicked his two-and-a-half year-old sister Beth from her high chair. “You gotta kesh da bus.”
“I’m hurrying,” Peter snapped. It was tough to swallow little bugs with a sore throat.
“Don’t you take that tone of voice with me,” his mother said crossly.
“Don’ you ta’ da’ tone of voyss wi’ me,” Beth said and clapped.
“Be quiet, Beth,” Peter scowled.
“Peter,” his mother said insistently as she pointed at her watch.
“I’m going,” Peter said, and got out of his seat. He was tired of the bugs anyway.
* * *
It didn’t matter, because the bus was late.
Peter joined Dill at the main road in front of Grandfather’s house. As usual, Dill was starting his homework thirty minutes before it was due. He sat crouched on the cement sidewalk, scribbling things hastily on a crumpled sheet of paper.
“Why do you always wait?” Peter asked.
“Uh, cuz it sucks? Homework sucks.”
“Well, have you ever thought that maybe it sucks because you wait so long to do it, and then it’s a big emergency?”
Dill rolled his eyes. “When do you do your homework?”
“At night after dinner.”
“Figures.”
“What does that mean?”
Dill kept his head down as he wrote. “It means you always do what grown-ups tell you to do. Ever since I met you, it’s, ‘Oh, we’re not supposed to do that! Oh, we’re not supposed to go in there!’”
Peter frowned. His throat hurt, his mother had been mean to him, his sister was a punk, and now his best friend was calling him a teacher’s pet. “Yeah, well, the last time we did something we weren’t supposed to, a bunch of dead guys came up out of the woods and – ”
“HEY!” Dill shouted, and pointed a finger at Peter. “I don’t want to talk about it!”
Ever since the fight with the dead hobos two weeks ago, Dill had shut down every attempt Peter made to talk about it. To Dill, it was ancient history – gone and buried.
“I’m just saying, that whole thing proves I don’t always do what I’m told.”
Dill returned warily to his homework. He kept shooting furtive glances at Peter as though expecting another surprise conversational attack. “There’s a big difference between…that…and doing your math homework, dude.”
“I don’t think so,” Peter said, annoyed.
“Do whatever works for you, man. I do what works for me.”
Peter pointed at Dill’s crumpled paper on the sidewalk. “This doesn’t look like it’s working so great.”
“While you were busy doing your homework last night, I was eating fudgesicles and watching the monster marathon on Channel 13.”
“What, again?”
Dill ignored Peter’s sarcastic tone. “Yeah, some vampire movie and a Frankenstein movie. I was busy squeezing all the fun I possibly could into my last few hours while you were doing your history report.”
“History…” Peter’s stomach suddenly sank. “We didn’t have a history report.”
Dill looked up, his eyes wide. “Yeah we did. Remember, on a Duskerville historical figure? I’m doin’ my great-great-grandpa. He got hung for stealing horses from the town mayor. They’re due first thing.”
Panic flooded Peter’s body. It all came rushing back – the writing on the chalk board, upper right corner: HISTORICAL FIGURE – 2 PAGES. “I don’t know any historical figures in Duskerville!”
“Make one up, that’s what I’m doing.”
“I thought your grandpa stole horses?”
Dill shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe he did. Who cares, it’s a better story than ‘He grew corn.’”
Peter squatted down on the cement beside Dill, undid his backpack, and ripped out a piece of paper from his notebook.
Dill smirked a little as he continued to write. “Who’s doing their homework at the last minute?”
“Shut up,” Peter muttered.
But before he could write down a single word, the bus arrived.
2
Peter and Dill scrambled to the back of the bus and sat down immediately. Dill scribbled furiously on his paper, filling it with chicken scratch. Peter just stared blankly at his, trying to come up with some sort of half-believable details about some imaginary relative.
Then he remembered the things Grandfather had told him about two weeks ago. “I could write about John Stephen and the dead guys we – ”
Dill shot out a hand without looking up. “DUDE. I DON’T want to TALK about it.”
“But he’s the only guy in my family I know anything about.”
“Yeah, and what exactly are you gonna write about him, that he lived next to a bunch of hobos who stole his tomatoes? I don’t think Mrs. Cashew’s gonna buy that.”
It was the most Dill had said on the subject in two weeks. And he was exactly right: unless they had seen it with their own eyes, no one would ever believe what Dill and Peter had been through that night.
“But – ”
“Hi, Peeeeeeteeeeeeer,�
� a girl’s voice interrupted.
Peter looked up to see Mercy Chalmers leaning over the seat in front of him. He hadn’t even noticed that the bus had stopped to let her on.
Mercy was a little weird. She wasn’t ugly, but she wasn’t pretty, exactly. Her eyes were a little too far apart. She was skinny as a piece of grass. She had this really quiet whistle coming out of her nose when she breathed: wheeeeee...wheeeeee. And sometimes Peter could see little hairs poking out of her nostrils. She always said his name “Peeeeteeeeeer,” which was really annoying. She always wore the same type of clothes: a white blouse and some sort of dress with suspenders that made her look like the kids in The Sound Of Music. She claimed to have seventeen cats. Her family didn’t celebrate holidays, and she was always asking people for pennies for her collection. “Do you have a penny? Can I have it? You don’t need it, it’s a penny.” Plus, her name was Mercy, which was a little weird, too.
And she liked Peter.
She was always walking by his desk at school and smiling like a puppy. “Hi, Peeeeeteeeeeeeer.” She always tried to get on his team in gym class, always tracked him down at lunchtime, and always sat near him on the bus. It was really annoying.
“It’s your girlfriend,” Dill whispered. “Kiss your girlfriend, Peeeeeteeeeeeer.”
Peter elbowed Dill. “Shut up,” he hissed, then half-smiled at his not-so-secret admirer. “Hi, Mercy.”
“Whatcha doin’?” Mercy asked.
“I forgot to do my homework,” Peter said. “Now I’ve got to write something on a historical figure in Duskerville, and I don’t know anybody.”
“Well then who are you going to write about?”
“He’s going to make something up,” Dill said. “I’m writing about my great-great-granpa who fought the Indians, then made friends with them and went to live in their teepee.”
“I thought he stole horses,” Peter said.
“I figure this is more interesting.”
“You can write about my great-great…great-great-uncle, I think,” Mercy offered. “He was the first coffin salesman in the county. He made a lot of money when cholera hit the town two hundred years ago.”
“Collars killed people?” Dill gasped. “I told my mom I hated wearing shirts with collars – I knew they could kill you!”
“Not collars, silly – cholera. It’s a disease that kills you.” Mercy’s voice dropped to a whisper. “It makes you poop too much.”
“Death by pooping?” Dill laughed. “Oh my gosh, that is the absolute worst way to die EVER. Your uncle made a ton of dough because people pooped themselves to death?”
“That’s kind of…weird,” Peter said.
“But you can make it cool, just add in some new facts,” Dill advised. “Make it so he was buried alive or something.”
“That’s not true!” Mercy protested.
“In one of his own coffins. Yeah, that’s awesome,” Dill said excitedly. “There was a sale, and he fell inside, and the coffin locked, and no one found him for two weeks and he was all dried up like a raisin. Yeah, write that.”
Peter tried not to gag as he thought of all the raisins he’d had for breakfast that morning.
“That’s not true at all!” Mercy cried out.
“What does being true have anything to do with history?” Dill asked as he turned back to writing his paper. “You don’t know what happened.”
“I do too! My mother told me!”
“Do you have a video of it?” Dill asked.
“Video cameras didn’t exist back then,” Mercy said, in a voice like duh, you are so stupid.
“Then you have no idea if anybody’s telling the truth. I don’t believe anything if you can’t see it on TV.”
“Well, they didn’t have TV until, like, 1960,” Peter said. “So what do you think happened before then?”
“They made it all up.”
“They made it all up?” Mercy repeated incredulously.
“George Washington, Egyptians, Christopher Columbus, they made it all up. That’s why it’s fine to write whatever you want. They made it all up, you make it all up, what’s the difference?”
“Dill, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Peter said.
“Whatever, man. You write your paper, I’ll write mine.”
“You can come up here and sit with me, Peeeeeteeeeeeer, and I’ll tell you all about my great-great-great-uncle,” Mercy said sweetly.
“Yeah, go sit with your girlfriend, Peeeeeteeeeeeer.”
“Shut up,” Peter hissed. “I’m okay, Mercy, thanks anyway.”
“Go sit with your girlfriend and learn about your new family for when you get married, Peeeeeteeeeeeeeer,” Dill giggled.
Peter hit him in the arm.
“Ow.” Dill frowned and shut up.
“Well, who are you going to write about, then?” Mercy asked.
“Uh…I’ll be okay,” Peter reassured her.
“Hmph.” Mercy slid down out of view. She was silent for a moment, then her head reappeared over the top of her seat.
“Peeeeeteeeeeeeer…do you have a penny?”
3
Peter was still writing at his desk when the first bell rang. His paper was all about a guy, Jebediah something, who fought in the American Revolution with the Indians and opened a corn store before he became mayor, rode off on a bunch of horses, and got buried alive. Peter couldn’t think straight – he was just writing, writing, writing in a panic. Whatever came out sounded good.
Until Mrs. Cashew finished taking roll and then stood up in front of the room.
“Well, class, I hope you did some excellent research about historical figures in Duskerville. There are so many interesting stories, I thought maybe we’d share some of them before we begin our lesson.”
Peter’s heart was beating HARD. No, not me, he prayed silently. Not me, PLEASE.
Mrs. Cashew’s eyes scanned the room…
please please not me
…passed over Peter…
oh thank you thank
…and then came back to him.
She smiled sweetly. “How about you first, Peter?”
* * *
Peter sat in silence on the bus ride home.
“It could’ve been worse,” Dill said.
“How?” Peter scowled.
Dill thought for a second.
“I could’ve had to read mine out loud.”
“Thanks a lot, Dill, you’re really helping.”
Peter could see it in his mind’s eye, the big red ‘F’ at the top of the paper. Mrs. Cashew had put it there in front of the whole class, after an angry lecture on how history is about truth and there’s nothing more important than the truth.
“Amen,” Dill had piped up from somewhere in the back of the room.
And now Peter had to get his mother to sign the paper and bring it back the next morning. He’d never gotten an F before in his life.
Peter shuddered and coughed. His throat felt like somebody had rubbed it with sandpaper.
“You don’t look so good,” Dill said.
“I don’t feel so good.”
“Peeeeeteeeeeeer,” Mercy’s voice came from behind him.
Oh God.
Peter looked around to see Mercy smiling sweetly, her face perched on the seat next to him. “What?” Peter asked harshly.
She looked taken aback. “You should have sat next to me this morning and let me help you.”
“Yeah, Peeeeeteeeeeeer,” Dill teased.
Peter glared at Dill. Dill grabbed the place on his arm where Peter had punched him that morning and scooted back a few inches.
“I could have told you about my great-great-great-great-uncle, and how he sold coffins, and you could have written down everything…”
Peter’s head was pounding. His eyes felt tight and scratchy, so he closed them.
“…and you could have gotten an A and when you read it in front of the class, Mrs. Cashew wouldn’t have gotten mad and y
ou wouldn’t have to get anybody to sign it, Peeeeeteeeeeeeer.”
Peter put his hand to his forehead. He felt hot and clammy. “Well, it’s too late now.”
“But you can sit beside me now, Peeeeteeeeeer. We could sit and talk before the bus ride is over, and…”
Mercy looked like she was about to take a big jump off the high dive…but despite her fear, she decided to go for it.
“…and if you wanted to, you could come over to my house after school and we could have snacks and watch TV. If you wanted to.”
Oh God. That was all he needed. An invitation to go sit on Mercy Chalmer’s couch covered in cat hair, and listen to her nose go wheeeee wheeee wheeee all afternoon while they watched weird church TV.
There was a sharp pain in Peter’s head. Beside him, Dill was trying to contain his laughter.
“Well, I don’t want to,” Peter answered crossly.
Mercy looked shocked at Peter’s tone. “Well, maybe tomorrow – ”
Dill went quiet. Or maybe Peter just couldn’t hear him because of the pounding of blood in his ears.
“No, not tomorrow.”
Mercy looked like somebody was threatening to throw one of her dolls down a well. “Well, maybe – ”
“NO, not today, not tomorrow, not any day,” Peter said angrily. “Don’t you get it? I don’t want to. EVER.”
Peter turned around and leaned his head against the seat in front of him. He had a knot in his stomach the size of a watermelon, but it wasn’t because of the pounding in his head or the scratchiness in his eyes. It was the way he had treated Mercy.
He felt horrible, but he couldn’t force himself to turn around and say anything to her. She might think he had changed his mind. Then she might start talking again. No, whatever he did, he couldn’t turn around.
They rode the rest of the way in silence. He heard Mercy get off at her stop and walk past him, but he never opened his eyes.
“Goodbye, Peter,” he thought he heard her say. Her voice was sad.
Huh, he thought. She didn’t say Peeeeteeeeeer.
And then she was gone.
4
Peter and Dill got off the bus.
“You okay, man?” Dill asked.
“I’m fine.”
Peter tried to walk straight, but the ground felt like a big ship, pitching and rolling beneath his feet.
“Cuz…you were kind of harsh on Mercy.”
“What’d you want me to do, kiss her?” Peter snapped. Suddenly it was hard to breathe. He stopped walking and leaned over, his hands on his knees.
Peter And The Vampires (Story #2) Page 1
