Richard Laymon - The Traveling Vampire Show

“Did they see you?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe not. I didn’t hear any shouts. No one came after me. I don’t think so, anyway. When I got into the woods, I kept changing directions to throw them off. Just in case someone was after me. Then I hid for a while.”

“Where’d you hide?” Rusty asked.

She shrugged again. “Under some old tree. It had fallen over and there was a space between it and the ground. I just barely fit in.”

“How long do you think you stayed in there?” I asked.

“Seemed like ages.” She shrugged again. “Maybe half an hour, I don’t know.”

“I bet that’s where you were when Lee and I were at Janks Field.”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Did you hear anyone calling your name?”

She shook her head.

“I called out for you and Rusty.”

“When was that?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe around twelve-thirty, I guess. Twelve-fifteen, twelve-thirty, something like that.”

Slim frowned as if thinking about it, and shook her head again. “I must’ve been somewhere in the woods.”

“You weren’t on the roof.”

Surprise on her face, she said, “You looked?”

“Yeah. I went over and jumped up and…”

“Went over to the shack?”

“Yeah.”

“What about all those people?”

“They weren’t paying much attention to us. Julian had gone into the bus…”

“Who’s that?”

“Julian Stryker. He’s the owner of the show.”

Looking surprised but not at all pleased, Slim said, “You met the owner?”

I nodded.

“What’d he look like?”

“I can see this coming,” Rusty said.

I glanced at him, then looked back at Slim. “He wore a black shirt….”

“They all wore black shirts, numbnuts,” Rusty reminded me.

Ignoring the remark, I said to Slim, “He had long, black hair. He was… I guess women would probably think he was really handsome.”

“Gorgeous?” Slim asked.

“I didn’t think so, but…”

“Was he carrying a spear?” Rusty asked.

I glared at him.

“Did he wear silver spurs?” Slim asked.

“Yeah.”

“That’s him,” she said.

“Knew it,” said Rusty.

Me, too. But I asked, “The guy who… picked up the dog and took it to the hearse?”

Slim nodded.

“Oh, man,” I muttered.

“What?”

“We asked him about you and Rusty.”

“What’d he say?”

“That he hadn’t seen you.”

“Wait’ll you hear the good part,” Rusty said, a strange smile on his face.

“Lee bought tickets from him,” I explained. “Four tickets for tonight’s performance of the Traveling Vampire Show. One for each of us.”

Slim stared at me. She looked a little stunned. “You’re kidding,” she said.

“They cost her forty bucks,” I said.

“But nobody under eighteen’s allowed.”

“Julian made an exception for us.”

“He’s got the hots for Lee,” Rusty explained.

Slim’s upper lip lifted slightly. Eyes turning toward Rusty, she said, “Maybe that’s why. Or maybe he did see us. Me, anyway. If he saw me running away—if any of them did—he might figure I watched them kill the dog. Maybe he wants to get me.”

A touch of scorn in his voice, Rusty said, “Why would he want to get you?”

“To stop me from telling what I saw.”

I could think of other reasons he might want Slim. They made me feel cold and tight inside. I decided not to mention them.

A grin on his face, Rusty said, “Maybe he wants to stick a spear up your ass.”

“Real funny,” Slim muttered.

I punched him. My fist smacked his soft upper arm through the sleeve of his shirt.

Face going red, he gasped, “Ah!” and grabbed his arm and gazed at me with shocked, accusing eyes. As I watched, his eyes filled with tears. “Real nice,” he said.

I turned to Slim. She looked as if she wished I hadn’t hit him, but she didn’t seem angry at me. More as if she thought the punch had probably not been the most terrific idea.

Though tears shimmered in Rusty’s eyes, he wasn’t exactly crying. They weren’t streaming down his face or anything. Frowning at me, he rubbed his arm.

“I didn’t hit you that hard,” I said.

“Hard enough. It hurt, man.”

“You shouldn’t have said what you did.”

“I was just being funny.”

“You weren’t being funny,” Slim assured him. “And you wouldn’t be making cracks like that if you’d watched them with the dog.”

“Sorry,” he muttered, still rubbing his arm.

“And as a matter of fact,” Slim said, “that guy really might want to stick a spear up my ass. Or up yours. Anyone who’ll do a thing like that to a dog… he wouldn’t think twice about doing it to a person.”

“Maybe we’d better forget about going to the show tonight,” I said.

Rusty’s mouth fell open. He looked as if I’d punched him again. “Shit,” he said. “We can’t not go!”

“I’m not going,” Slim said. “No way.”

He turned to me. “I wanta see the show, man! Don’t you? I mean, Valerie! If we don’t go tonight, we’ll never see her. You wanta see her, don’t you?”

“It might not be such a good idea,” I said.

“It’d be a lousy idea,” Slim said. “I’m sure not going anywhere near those people again, and I don’t think you guys should, either. They’re a bunch of sickos.”

“Just because they killed that stupid dog? Hey, Dwight tried to jump on the damn thing. Is he a sicko, too?”

“It’s different.”

“Dog would’ve been just as dead. Except he missed. He sure as hell planned to land on it.”

She glanced at me, shook her head, and said to Rusty, “You know good and well it was different. Stop being a creep, okay?”

“I just don’t wanta get rooked outa the show,” he said. “I don’t care what they did to that stupid dog. Look how it messed you up. It deserved what it got.”

“Didn’t deserve that.” Slim looked from Rusty to me and said, “Anyway, let’s get out of here. I want to go home and get cleaned up.”

Home.

I remembered what we’d done there.

It all rushed in: sneaking into her bedroom, looking at her things, Rusty fooling with her mother’s bra, and the awful accident with the vase and how we’d left the mess behind. A nasty flood of heat flashed through my body.

Rusty cast me a warning glance.

And suddenly an idea popped into my head. Trying to keep my relief from showing, I frowned and said, “Maybe we’d better go over to Lee’s house first and tell her about what happened. See what she thinks.”

Rusty looked pained. “She hears what they did, man, she isn’t gonna take us.”

I gaped at him, astonished that he didn’t realize a trip to Lee’s house would save us from going to Slim’s. The mess in her mother’s room was sure to be discovered sooner or later, but I preferred later. The longer we could put it off, the better.

“She shouldn’t take us,” Slim said. “None of us should go to that show.”

“Anyway,” I said, “we have to tell Lee what happened.”

“No, we don’t.”

“Yes, we do. Otherwise, she’ll be waiting for us.” To Slim, I explained, “We’re supposed to be at her house at 10:30 tonight.” To Rusty, I said, “We can’t just not show up when she’s expecting us.”

“So we do show up. I’ve got no problem with that.”