Richard Laymon - The Traveling Vampire Show

Not bothering to clean Scotty’s blood off its tip, she swept the arrow over her shoulder and dropped it into her quiver.

“You lie down, too,” she told Tim.

Without protest or hesitation, he stretched out on the ground.

To Rusty and me, Phoebe said, “I guess that’s enough target practice for one day. Let’s go home.”

We went to the target first. I plucked the arrows out of Eichmann’s eyes and nose and gave them to Phoebe. Then I picked up the cardboard box.

Scotty, Smack and Tim stayed on the ground.

We started walking away, Phoebe in the middle.

They stayed down.

When we were pretty far away but still within earshot, Phoebe stopped and turned around. She shouted, “We won’t tell if you don’t!”

They never did.

We never did.

In the woods after we got away from them, we laughed nervously, shook our heads, slapped each other on the back. and told Phoebe “Good going” and “Way to go” about a million times.

Then I saw she had tears in her eyes.

When I saw that, my own eyes went hot and wet.

I’m not really sure why either of us got weepy like that, but I suspect there were plenty of reasons. They had to do with fear and loyalty and bravery and cowardice and humiliation and pride. They also had to do, I think, with the joy of survival.

Pretty sure we didn’t spill any tears over damages inflicted on Scotty or his pals.

After that time in Janks Field, by the way, they were no longer pals. They stayed away from each other, and really stayed away from me, Rusty and Phoebe.

They were so scared of Phoebe that they never even dared to give us dirty looks. Many times, in the first few months after the incident, I saw each of them cross streets or start walking in the opposite direction just to avoid us—Scotty with a pretty good limp.

One week after her target practice in Janks Field, Phoebe won the Fourth of July archery contest (junior division) with a final, amazing shot that would’ve done Robin Hood proud.

She made the shot, of course, with her lucky arrow.

And won the hand-tooled leather quiver.

On both sides of the quiver, I could see the powder blue strings of Slim’s bikini top, her bandages and bare, tanned skin down to the waistband of Lee’s red shorts.

I was half lost in how Slim looked from behind, half dwelling on the summer she won the quiver and pretty much paying no attention at all to anything else as I followed her to the door of her bedroom.

One step into the hallway, she stopped.

“What?” Rusty asked.

As if he didn’t know.

Slim went, “Shhhh.” Then she walked straight across the hallway and into her mother’s bedroom. We went in after her, spread out, and stared at the mess we’d left behind. A puddle, prickly with broken glass, remained on top of the dresser. The carpet below the dresser now looked dry, but dangerous with shards from the demolished vase and perfume bottle. A few bright yellow rose petals lay among the remains as if they’d been blown there from somewhere else.

The flowers were gone.

For a moment, I thought that Rusty or I must’ve thrown them away.

Then I remembered that we hadn’t touched them.

A chill crawled up the back of my neck.

Rusty and I glanced at each other.

He, too, had noticed the roses were gone…

“We better get outa here,” he whispered.

Ignoring him, Slim stepped around the mess on the carpet and walked slowly through the room. We stayed with her. Since both her hands were busy with the bow and arrow, she stood by, ready to shoot, while I looked under the bed and Rusty opened the closet door. When she entered the master bathroom, I crept in behind her.

The bathroom held flowery scents.

No trace of the yellow roses, though.

And no trace of any intruders.

Turning around, Slim pointed her arrow away from me. Her eyes met mine. She gave me a quick, nervous smile. Then she came toward me and I backed out of the bathroom.

Rusty looked glad to see us.

For the next ten or fifteen minutes—or hour—we searched the house.

It was hard on the nerves.

In some ways, I felt major relief. Because of the real intruder, Slim would never have to know about our invasion of her home.

But the relief came with a large price.

Someone else had come into her house, roamed its silent rooms, stood beside Slim’s bed while neatly slipping the paperback copy of Dracula out of her headboard and chewing the book. Someone had stolen into her mother’s bedroom and made the yellow roses disappear.

Chewing the book seemed like the act of a madman.

Taking the roses seemed like something a woman might do. Or the Frankenstein monster, I suddenly thought, remembering Karloff’s smile when the little girl gave him a flower.

As we crept through the house, upstairs and down, entering every room, opening every door, glancing under and behind furniture, checking everywhere large enough to conceal a per. son, I prayed that we would find no one.

I was a nervous wreck.

Not a moment went by that I didn’t expect someone to jump out at us.

Julian Stryker, maybe. Or Valeria (though I’d never seen her). Or some of their black-shirted crew.

Maybe armed with spears.

I tried to convince myself that this was impossible, that they had no way of knowing where Slim lived, but it certainly wasn’t impossible. There were many ways to learn such things.

By following us, for instance.

I gripped the knife tightly. My mouth was dry. My heart thudded. Sweat dripped down my face, fell off my ears and nose and chin, and glued the clothes to my skin. I felt as if a cry of terror was ready to explode from my chest.

But we found no one.

“I want to finish changing,” Slim said when our search was done.

“We’ll go with you,” I told her.

If Rusty had said that, she would’ve answered with a crack. “In your dreams,” maybe. But I’d said it, so she knew I wasn’t being a wiseguy.

“Okay.”

We followed her upstairs. In her bedroom, she dropped her bow and arrow onto her bed. Facing us, she said, “You guys can wait in the hall.” Then she took off her quiver. Not paying much attention to what she was doing, she dragged the leather strap up against her left breast. It snagged the underside of her bikini and lifted the fabric. As the rising strap pushed at her breast, she realized what was happening, saw us watching, and quickly turned her back.

“In the hall,” she reminded us. “Okay?”

“We’re going, we’re going,” Rusty said.

I said, “I’ll leave the door open a crack.”

“Fine.”

We hurried out of her room and I pulled the door almost shut.

Rusty quietly mouthed, “Did you see that?”

I gave him a dirty look.

He mouthed, “Oh, like you didn’t look.”

Speaking in a normal voice, I said, “Why don’t you go to the bathroom and wash your blood off? I’ll start cleaning up the glass.”

He shook his head. “I’ll help.”

“You’ll get blood on stuff.”

He inspected his hands. They looked as if they’d been smeared with rust-colored paint. Palms up, he closed and opened his fingers. The stickiness made crackling sounds. “Maybe I better,” he admitted. “But you’ve gotta come, too.”

“You’re not scared, are you?”

“Up yours,” he said. He gave me the finger, then turned his back on me, marched to the bathroom at the end of the hall, and vanished through its doorway. A moment later, the door bumped shut. I heard a soft, ringing thump as Rusty locked it. Soon, water began running through the pipes.

I stood alone in the hallway.