“Yes.”
“It’s an historic moment.”
“Yes. To the searchers it sure was.”
“They found a withered, almost mummified human body within the box.”
“Sure did.”
“Strange, indeed. Now, can you tell us how this strange situation turned so deadly?”
“It happened fast,” replied the witness. “I couldn’t see everything once everyone crowded around closer. I just remember seeing the old man lying there, looking so strange. Almost like a wax dummy. Then one of the guys in charge reached out and touched him. He opened his eyes. The old man woke up. He grabbed the guy that was touching him and the guy started screaming holy hell. There was a struggle and everything just went crazy after that. Guys were yelling and running every which way. Next thing I knew, I saw this … thing.”
“Thing?” said the anchor, raising his eyebrow, sort of like Dr. Evil.
“It was like the old man. But he was younger. Stronger. And it started to grow wings. Kind of like bat wings.”
“You don’t mean like Batman?” asked the anchor.
“No, no, Batman wears a cape. I mean real wings sprouted out of his back. He came right up off the ground, flapping those wings, like it was a totally normal thing to do.”
“Shocking.”
“To say the least,” said the witness. “And that’s the last thing I remember. After that I was just running for my life to find a place to hide.”
***
“He’s heading to the US,” said Joseph Snow. “I’ll have to mobilize the Maine branch of the pack, if they haven’t already heard the news.”
“Are we positive it’s a vampire?” Matthew asked his grandfather.
“I’m afraid so,” Joseph answered.
“I only ask because it’s not unheard of for the Canadians to get drunk and riot about hockey games.”
“True.”
“Well, nobody seems to have any clear footage of the vampire. I was just thinking, maybe this is just drunken hysteria gone crazy.”
“I see your point,” Joseph said. “But the fact is, drunken sports fans rarely grow wings from their backs. They may injure one another and possibly kill a few bystanders, burn a few cars and stores, but this incident has gone well beyond that. It is way too organized to be anything but the systematic work of a thief of life. And, given my theory of the island being a tomb rather than a gold depository, it makes sense. He was set loose by night, as luck would have it. Living blood reached out and touched him in his weakened state, giving him new life. Now that he’s been fed, he’s building a following, and he’s leading that growing force toward the greater population of the States.”
“Bad,” Matthew said under his breath.
“A nightmare,” Joseph said. Then he rose and walked to his study.
Evie was at the opposite end of the great room, leaning against the counter that separated the room from the kitchen. She was working on a leftover biscuit and sipping an excellent cup of brew. She had heard the news and had heard her grandfather’s theory, but she wasn’t all too concerned. As he disappeared into his study, where he spent much of his time, her cousin stood up and came to join her in the kitchen.
***
Joseph Snow stood before what appeared to be an ordinary bookshelf in his study. He moved a few books and reached into the shadows behind the shelf, feeling for the hidden locking mechanism. Locating it, he released the steel bolt, then stepped back, pulling the shelf slowly out into the open space of the room. Then he moved into the tunnel behind the shelf and flipped a light switch.
The rectangular secret room, lined with fireproofing behind the oaken walls, came to life. Here Joseph kept thousands of his rarest books and historical documents, stored in rows of seven-foot shelves and encased within a glass climate control system. A vast and priceless collection. Accumulated gradually over his unusually long life. His most prized material possessions.
One specific document had come to the forefront of his mind as he sat watching the news. A narrative of a sea voyage. The destination, an unnamed island. He need only find that document now to confirm his suspicion of the creature resurrected from its island tomb.
***
“Coffee smells great,” Matthew said, and slapped Evie on the shoulder in passing. Being several inches over six feet and strongly built, the slap was a little harder than she appreciated.
“Don’t touch me,” she said.
He stopped and stared at her, half smiling.
“Don’t look at me, either.”
“What’s your problem?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“Isn’t it easier to tell me than to have me guess?”
“You don’t usually give me grief.”
“Same with you,” he said. “You’re usually pretty mellow about things. So what’s up?”
“I don’t like this dream. Am I allowed to have an opinion in my own dream?”
“What’s so bad about it?” he asked.
She shrugged and took another sip of coffee.
“Oh, I get it,” Matthew said. “It’s one of those dreams you have absolutely no control over.”
“That, and it’s so real that it’s creepy.”
“Gotcha.”
“It’s just not my idea. And honestly, I’m not really into horror.”
“Stop stressing. It’ll pass.”
“Not soon enough.”
“Could be worse,” he said, pouring his coffee.
“Could be a lot better.”
“How so?”
There was a knock at the front door before she could answer. No one else acknowledged the knock, so Evie walked over and opened the door.
Gathered on the front porch were seven or eight kids. All wore homemade ghost costumes. They were very short, looking strangely similar to the cast of an iconic Halloween cartoon special. One girl wore an ugly witch mask over her sheet. One boy had far too many eyes cut into his sheet.
In unison all the kids exclaimed, “Trick or treat!”
“Is it even Halloween today?” Evie asked.
“Sure,” answered the girl in the ugly mask.
“Even if it is, who goes trick-or-treating at dawn?”
“We’re not worried about those details,” said the girl. “We only want candy.”
“Great parents y’all have,” Evie shot back.
“Lady, we really didn’t come to chat. We’ve got a big party planned for later. Can you just give us some candy?”
“Lady? I’m sixteen, for your information.”
“Really? You’ve sure got a lot of white hair.”
“That’s a sign of my ancestors, if you must know.”
“Whatever …”
“Don’t whatever me, kid.”
“Can we just have some candy now?”
“You’re the mouthy one,” Evie said, glaring at the girl. “The wannabe doctor. The football prankster.”
“So what’s your point?”
“I don’t like you, that’s what. Try that football business with me, I dare you.”
The girl looked around at the other kids, hoping for backup. None was offered. Not even from the piano player.
“I knew this was a bad idea,” said the mouthy girl’s younger brother. “We wasted all this time getting here, I haven’t seen a single pumpkin patch around this farm, and now it looks like we won’t even get any candy.”
“Rats,” groaned the boy with too many eyes in his sheet.
“Sorry, we don’t keep candy around this house,” Evie informed them. “Even if we did, no decent parents would let their kids come near this place. Violent episodes have been known to happen around here.”
At this point the mouthy girl lost what little patience she had and turned to the other kids. She was complaining and trying her best to stir them up to a riot. Seeing this, Evie decided she was done playing nice. She focused her mind and in an instant made her human head change to her huge growling wolf’s hea
d. The kids all fled in terror, hollering like crazy and making slow progress on their very short legs.
“Don’t come back!” Evie shouted after them, her head normal again. “And if you see a fat orange cat wearing a pirate hat, tell him not to bother!”
***
“This is getting weirder by the minute,” Evie said to Matthew, now back in the kitchen.
“No use complaining to me,” he returned, casually sipping his coffee.
“I was just saying …”
“Say all you want, cuz. I’m only a supporting character. Not much I can do to help you.”
She scrunched her brow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just what I said.”
“Explain, please.”
“What’s to explain?”
“Talk to me like I’m five,” she said. “Like I know nothing of my life.”
He sighed in that typically male fashion. As if being asked to communicate beyond grunts and gestures and fragments required a lofty effort.
“Please, Matthew,” she said.
“Fine,” he relented. “I was saying you know how it is. You’re one of the prime characters in this series. Right? So my point was, if you don’t like the way things are going, there’s no use telling me about it. Take it up with the man in charge.”
“Man in charge,” Evie repeated under her breath. Her head started to whirl. A hundred ideas and memories rushed at her at once. It felt like the house was spinning around her. She really had no interest in going to Oz.
“Don’t tell me,” Matthew said, his face brightening as he watched her. “You honestly didn’t know?”
Without answering him Evie sprinted through the great room so fast that she barely made the right-hand turn into her grandfather’s study. For some reason she’d always found left-hand turns to feel more fluid and natural than right-hand turns. The secret door stood open in the study. She went into the hidden room and saw her grandfather behind the glass barrier of the climate control system. She tapped the thick glass. He looked up from a document in hand and motioned her to enter. She opened the glass door and shut it quickly but softly behind her.
“Hey, you,” he said. “I’ve got news. My suspicions appear to have been on target.”
“Papa, are we all fictitious?” she blurted.
“It’s a vampire, all right. Hundreds of years old.”
“Are we the—”
“Imprisoned on that island.”
“—products of some weirdo’s imagination?”
“And not just any vampire.”
“Papa!”
“Take it easy,” he said, glancing at her disapprovingly. “There’s no need to shout.”
“Answer me.”
“To begin with, there’s absolutely nothing to worry about. Plenty of people ask these sort of questions at some point in their lives. Are we creatures or creations? Are we alone in the universe? If there are aliens somewhere out there, are they actually all slimy and gross and hostile? And if they are so hostile and dangerous, why do the largest military powers of the world spend all their time and money developing weapons to fight each other, rather than to repel the massive extra-terrestrial threat?”
“Please …” Evie said.
“What? You mean you’ve never asked yourself any of those questions?”
“No lessons now,” she said. “Just level with me. Are we fictional characters?”
“Of course,” he said. “I guess I just assumed that you understood that. Everyone else around here seems to.”
She swallowed hard and backed slowly away from him, to the door, her heart drumming and her stomach going all fluttery. She was smack in the middle of the worst sort of epiphany. All the strange facts and quirks of her life suddenly made sense in a sickening moment of clarity. She felt like she was possibly on the verge of a complete emotional upheaval. Since she’d never really had many of those before, it was sure to be a whopper. Like Mount. St. Helens.
“Our lives,” Evie proceeded slowly, as in a key scene of a great drama. “Not only are we made-up characters, we’re all from a male POV, aren’t we?”
“Yes,” Joseph confirmed. “I assumed you knew that as well. Now, about this vampire problem. I have in my hands an account written centuries ago, detailing the crossing of the North Atlantic by a group of—”
“Papa,” she interrupted. “I can’t handle these necessary plot components right now. Nothing is ever simple with this family. And you’re always mansplaining me about something or another.”
His eyebrows went up. “If that’s how you wish to see it,” he said coolly. “Perhaps you could spend the next century or so studying, as I have. Then I could save my breath. Maybe take a long overdue vacation.”
“That’s not even close to fair.”
“Neither was your totally uncharacteristic and disrespectful statement. But no hard feelings on my end. This is your weird little dream, not mine. I’m sure you’ll regret it in the morning and apologize to me, though I won’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”
Two or three seconds of heavy silence.
“Anyway,” Joseph said. “According to this document, the vampire appears to be from—”
“No,” Evie groaned, backing and reaching for the door knob. It all made horrible but completely practical sense. Only a male author would overlook his heroine’s feelings in favor of advancing the overall plot. In this case, a pack of really awesome wolves poised to face an undead leech bent on pillaging the globe.
“Go for a run,” Joseph suggested, seeing her distress. “If you can’t control yourself, go tire yourself out.”
“But that’s our answer for almost every problem,” she said. “Running.”
“Because it works,” he returned. “We are wolves, after all. And no one has the energy to raise pointless arguments after a good sprint.”
“Ugh.”
“What?”
“I’m upset, in case you didn’t notice.”
“I did notice. Hence my question. Now I’ll ask another. Why has my stating of rather obvious facts upset you so?”
“Because …” she whined.
“If you don’t understand why you’re upset, how can you justify an emotional outburst?” he asked.
“Just once can I please act purely on emotions without being shown what a useless waste of time it is?”
“Of course you can. Just not in this house.”
“But it’s my dream.”
“True. But, as you can see, I am still completely myself within said dream, and I built this house with my bare hands as a refuge from the senseless world. You might be my favorite grandchild, but if you think I’m susceptible to emotional manipulation halfway through my second century of life, think again.”
That said he set down the document, produced a random violin seemingly out of thin air, and gave the strings a few light strokes.
“Since when do you play?” Evie asked.
“Since now,” he replied, and began playing slowly and thoughtfully a melancholy tune. Like Sherlock Holmes when he had some serious thinking to do.
Evie watched him for a moment with a swelling grumble of frustration rising up from her belly. When she could take it no more she spun and left the glass enclosure. Stormed from the study to the great room. Went out the slider. Slammed it almost too hard. Dropped her robe. Surged forward as the raging wolf and darted for the trail by the apple trees. She was heading to Oak Hill. The secret place of solace and pack meetings.
***
It wasn’t long before she overtook the now lost troop of cartoon candy beggars. While they screamed and scattered at the sight of her, the silver-white wolf kept her focus locked on the snooty one with the witch mask. She closed on her like a heat-seeking missile, and hit her about as hard. Her attack was brief but decisive, and the notorious mouthpiece was silenced once and for all. Then, turning from the mangled remains, Evie heard the other kids thanking her from their various hiding spots, while a
lso begging to be spared.
“Get off our land!” she growled. “We are dangerously possessive of our territory. And never speak of what you have seen. Or else!”
From there she blazed up the trail to the hill, like hell on wheels, and lay atop the smooth stone of Moon Rock, the peak of Oak Hill. Thinking and stewing, she tried to relax as she watched the first dim light of day crawl over the tops of the sea of trees.
Racking her memory, she searched for any clue that might explain this dream. She never consumed mind-altering fungus growing in the forest. And it had been many months since she’d watched any sort of horror or vampire movies. So where had it come from?
Finally it hit her. By calming herself and employing her mind, she was able to backtrack through her memories and identify the source. At first she was annoyed, because her grandfather’s technique had worked so flawlessly. But once she let that annoyance go she felt a comforting wave of relief wash over her.
She ran like a speed demon back to the house.
***
Family and pack members had been piling into the house in her absence. The place, though large, was filling up fast. She worked through the crowd and found her mother and grabbed her by the wrist. They went through the kitchen and down the hall to one of the spare bedrooms.
“I figured it out, Mom,” she chirped through a proud smile. “I know what caused this crazy dream.”
“Dracula,” Janie stated casually while inspecting her fingernails.
“Ugh! How did you know?”
“I found your grandfather’s old copy on your bed after you ran out. I saw it and everything clicked. You fell asleep reading a Victorian horror classic. Combine that with your grandfather’s stories about Oak Island, and here we all are in a strange mashup. The book is being poured through now, along with digital copies on various platforms, for insight. Your grandfather and uncles are preparing a battle strategy as we speak. And, of course, for added insight, they’re playing the single greatest vampire movie ever made.”
“The one with Anthony Hopkins?”
“That’s okay,” Janie said. “But I’m talking about The Lost Boys.”
Evie collapsed onto the spare bed. Flopped back and had a little kicking and swinging temper fit.
“Feel better?” her mother asked.
“Why is our author doing this to me?” Evie said.
“Me? Excuse us all, we didn’t realize you were the only one involved. And doing what?”
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