Richard Laymon - The Traveling Vampire Show

“Yeah, maybe,” I said, but I pictured Slim and Rusty racing over Janks Field, the yellow dog chasing them and gaining on them and finally leaping onto Slim’s back and burying its teeth in the nape of her neck and taking her down. Rusty looking back over his shoulder…

Wrong, I thought. Rusty’s slower than Slim. He would be dragging behind and first to get nailed by the dog.

Unless Slim held back to protect him.

Which she might do.

Probably did do.

So then, though she was the faster of the two, she would’ve been the one to get attacked.

In my mind, I once again pictured Rusty looking over his shoulder. He watches Slim go down beneath the dog, then hesitates, knowing he should run back to help her.

But does he go back?

With Rusty, who knows?

I’m not saying he was a coward. He had guts, all right. I’d seen him do plenty of brave things—even foolbardly things, every so often. But he had a selfish streak that worried me.

Take for example how he snuck off, that morning, to eat his Ding-Dong.

Or what he did last Halloween.

Rusty, Dagny (later to be known as Slim) and I figured Janks Field would be the best of all possible places to visit on the spookiest night of the year. Maybe, as a bonus, we’d get to spy on a satanic orgy, or even (if we really lucked out) a human sacrifice.

But what had seemed like a great idea during the last week or two of October turned suddenly into a bad idea at just after sundown on Halloween. Confronted with walking out to Janks Field in the dark, I think we all realized that the dangers were more real than make-believe.

We’d gathered on the sidewalk in front of Rusty’s house and we were all set to go. We wore dark clothes. We carried flashlights. We were armed with hidden knives—just in case. At supper, I’d told Mom and Dad that I would be going over to Rusty’s to “goof around.”

Which was not exactly a lie.

As we left Rusty’s house behind and started walking in the general direction of Route 3, Dagny said, “I’ve been thinking.”

“Hope you didn’t strain nothing,” Rusty said.

“Maybe we should do something else tonight.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Not go to Janks Field.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, I mean it.”

“You wanta chicken out?”

“It’s not chicken to be smart.”

“Bwok-bwok-bwok-bwok-bwok.”

“Hey, cut it out,” I said.

“You gonna chicken out, too?” Rusty asked me.

“Nobody’s chickening out,” I said.

“Glad to hear it. I’d hate to think my two best friends are a couple of yellow-bellied cowards.”

“Up yours,” I said.

We kept on walking. Most of the houses in the neighborhood were well-lighted and had jack-o’-lanterns glowing on their porches. On both sides of the street, small groups of kids were making the rounds, walking or running from house to house with bags for their goodies. Most of them were dressed up: some in those flimsy plastic store-bought costumes (witches, Huckleberry Hound, Superman, the Devil, and so on); many in home-made outfits (pirates, gypsies, vampires, hobos, princesses, etc.); and a few (who probably lacked imagination, enthusiasm or funds) pretty much wearing their regular clothes along with a mask. Whatever their costumes, many of them laughed and yelled. I heard people knocking on doors, heard doorbells dinging, heard chants of “Trick or treat!”

We’d done that ourselves until that year. But when you get to be fifteen, trick or treating can seem like kid stuff.

And I guess it is kid stuff compared to a journey to Janks Field.

Walking along, seeing those kids on their quests for candy, I felt very adult and superior—but part of me wished I could be running from house to house the way I used to in my infamous Headless Phantom costume, a rubber-headed axe in one hand and a treat-heavy grocery sack swinging from the other.

Part of me wished we were hiking to anywhere but Janks Field.

Part of me couldn’t wait to get there.

I have a feeling Dagny and Rusty might’ve felt the same way.

Regardless of how any of us felt, however, there was no more talk of quitting. Soon, we left town behind and walked along the dirt shoulder of Route 3. Though we had flashlights, we didn’t use them. The full moon lit the road for us.

Every so often, a car came along and we had to squint and look away from its headlights. Otherwise, we had the old, two-lane highway all to ourselves.

Or so we thought.

When we finally came to the dirt road that would lead us through the woods to Janks Field, Dagny stopped and said, “Let’s take five before we start in, okay?”

“Scared?” Rusty asked.

“Hungry.”

That got his attention. “Huh?” he asked.

Dagny reached into a pocket of her jeans, saying, “Anybody want some of my Three Musketeers?”

“Big enough to share with a friend!” Rusty proclaimed.

“Sure,” I said.

I took out my flashlight and shined it for Dagny as she bent over, pressed the candy bar against the thigh of her jeans, and used her pocket knife to cut it straight through the wrapper. Rusty took the first chunk, I took the next, the Dagny kept the third.

Before starting to eat, she slipped the knife blade into her mouth to lick and suck it clean.

Rusty and I started to eat our sections of the Three Musketeers.

In the moonlight, Dagny drew the blade slowly out of her tight lips like the wooden stick of an ice cream bar. Then she said, “Somebody’s coming.”

Those are words you don’t want to hear, not on Halloween night at the side of a moonlit road, forest all around you, the town two miles away.

I suddenly lost all interest in the candy.

“Don’t look,” Dagny whispered. “Just stand still. Pretend everything’s all right.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Rusty whispered.

“You wish.”

Dagny stood motionless, gazing through the space between Rusty and me.

“Who is it?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“How many?”

“Just one. I think.”

“What’s he doing?” Rusty asked.

“Coming down the road. Walking.”

“How big is he?” I asked.

“Big.”

“Shit,” Rusty muttered. Then he popped the last of his Three Musketeers bar into his mouth and chewed loudly, his mouth open, his teeth making wet sucky noises as they thrust into the thick, sticky candy and pulled out.

“What’ll we do?” I asked Dagny.

“See who he is?” she suggested.

“Let’s haul ass,” Rusty said through his mouthful.

“I don’t know,” Dagny said. “Running off into the woods doesn’t seem like a brilliant plan. If we stay here, at least some cars might come by. Anyway, maybe this guy’s harmless.”

“Three of us, one of him,” I pointed out.

Dagny nodded. “And we’ve got knives.”

Still chewing, Rusty glanced over his shoulder to see who was coming. Then he turned his head forward and said, “Double-shit. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m outa here.” He hustled for the darkness where the forest shrouded the dirt road. Looking back at us, he called, “Come on, guys!”

Dagny stayed put.

Therefore, so did I.

“Come on!”

We didn’t, so Rusty said, “Your funerals.” Then he vanished into the darkness enclosing the dirt road.

“Great,” I muttered.

Dagny shrugged in the moonlight. “Two of us, one of him.”

I stuffed the remains of my Three Musketeers into a pocket of my jacket, then turned around.

And understood why Rusty had run away.

What I suddenly didn’t understand is how Dagny could’ve remained so calm.